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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES 



THE 

RELIGION OF MOSES 



BY / 

v' 

ADOI.PH Moses 






'^^'fif~2-' 



LOUISVILLE 

FI.HXNER BROTHERS 

1S94 






COrVRlGHTKD, lSi)4, BY ADOLPH MOSES. 



DEDICATED 
TO THE MEMORY 

OF 

NATHAN BLOOM 



PREFACE. 

Thk little book which I offer to the public 
la5^s no claim to originality. It is rather 
hoped that the reader will find in it nothing 
that will seem new and startling to him. It 
is simply an attempt, made with much diffi- 
dence, to bring the basal moral and relig- 
ious ideas of Yahvism or Jehovism into 
clear view, and to trace their origin back 
to their true source — to the inspired genius 
of Moses. For I hold, with the biblical tra- 
dition, that Moses was in the deepest and 
widest sense the founder of the religion of 
Israel. The prophets who came after him did 
not originate, but only developed and propa- 
gated the religion of ethical monotheism 
first promulgated b}^ the son of Amram. 
My contention is that Mosaism never was 
a tribal religion. From the very day of its 
appearance it was universal in essence and 
scope. Time was, when such views needed 
no defense ; but nowadays it is b^^ many 
considered unscientific, unworthj^ of a criti- 



viii preface;. 



cal student of history, to follow the lines of 
the biblical tradition with regard to the part 
played b}- Moses in the religious life of man- 
kind. The rise of true monotheism and of 
its lofty doctrines is ascribed to the prophets 
of the eighth and seventh centuries before 
Christ. The creative work of Moses is re- 
duced to a minimum. The grandest actor 
in the drama of humanity's onward spiritual 
struggle appears a shadowy or mythical 
figure to the distorted vision of hj^per- criti- 
cism. The greatest religious and moral 
revolution known to history is by an influ- 
ential school of modern writers referred 
back to the mysterious agency of slow im- 
personal development. The Shibboleth of 
evolution is indiscriminately applied to all 
phenomena, and is believed to explain read- 
ily even the most extraordinary manifesta- 
tions and the greatest works of the human 
mind. Our age refuses to credit great men 
with great things. There is blind faith in 
the progressive forces and the wonderful 
achievements of the masses. The teeming- 
multitudes of average men are personified 



PREFACE. IX 

as nations, and each people is represented 
as the unconscious producer of all the 
results of its civilization. The influence 
of individual genius on the intellectual, 
moral, religious and political growth of 
mankind, is belittled or eliminated as much 
as possible. 

This tendency is easily accounted for. 
It was after a long and bitter struggle 
against the baneful rule of one man and 
against the selfish sway of aristocracy that 
the reign of democracy has been established. 
The political equality of all men has been 
fought and won on the just theory that all 
men are born equal as to all human rights. 
In the stress of this great spiritual battle 
the old disposition of the race to hero-wor- 
ship necessarily suffered shock. The belief 
of the supreme infliience of great men on 
the destinies of nations was well-nigh de- 
stroyed, and the opposite belief was engen- 
dered, that the masses are the true creators 
of civilization, that they have by a slow 
process evolved all that constitutes the 
wealth and glory of mankind. In a word, 



PREFACE. 



the spontaneous evolution of the masses 
toward the higher hfe became a sort of 
dogma with leading historians and social 
philosophers. 

Yet a healthy reaction has already set in. 
Thinking men have commenced to realize 
that the drama of human history minus the 
parts played therein b}^ the world's great 
men would be like the play of Hamlet with 
Hamlet left out. It is always the indomi- 
table energy of a small minority of superior 
men that gives birth to new ideas and ideals, 
originates and sustains new movements, and 
pushes the masses forward along the path 
of progress. In matters of science, art, in- 
vention and government the facts are too 
patent to require proof. The evidence is no 
less obvious with regard to the hi.story of re- 
ligion. Without the genius of Mohammed 
Islamism would certainly never have sprung 
into existence. Without him the Arabs 
might have for thousands of 5^ears longer 
continued to be steeped in idolatry and 
its degrading practices. Without Jesus and 
Paul there would assuredly l^e no Christi- 



PREFACE. XI 



anity. It is undeniable that Prince Gautama 
Sakya-muni was the founder of Buddhism. 
These three great religions have spread far 
and wide, and have been adopted and as- 
similated by nations which had no share in 
the formation of their new faith. And yet 
we are told to believe that Yahvism came 
into being without the originating genius of 
a founder, and that the unique phenomenon 
of moral monotheism simply rose by spon- 
taneous generation and self-development 
from the religious consciousness of an idol- 
atrous and semi-barbarous people. All 
analogies of history compel us to assume, 
that some one man of the rarest spiritual 
powers must have originated those glorious 
religious ideas and moral ideals which even 
the wonderful people of Hellas and its 
wisest man did not attain to. If it was not 
Moses, then some other man of towering 
genius must have been the author of what 
we call Yahvism or Mosaism. Now, all the 
memories, traditions and records of the 
Hebrew people agree in regarding Moses 
ben Amrara as the founder of Israel's re-' 



Xll PREFACE. 



ligion. The prophets of the eighth century 
nowhere give the faintest hint that they are 
teaching new religious ideas and moral prin- 
ciples. All their writings presuppose the 
religion of Yahvism as well known and uni - 
versally accepted as the national religion of 
Israel. All speak of it as a faith established 
from of old by Moses. 

Many a reader will doubtless ask, "Since 
you still hold fast to the biblical tradition 
with regard to Moses, why do you not go a 
step further in the same direction, and in 
accordance with the story of the Bible trace 
the origin of Yahvism back to Abraham, 
Isaac and Jacob?" To this objection, I 
reply : The Bible itself makes a clear dis- 
tinction between the idea of God as revealed 
by Moses and that known to the patriarchs. 
"I appeared unto Abraham, Isaac and Jacob 
as El Shaddai, but by my name Yahve — or 
Jehovah — I was not known to them." In 
the opinion of the sacred writer the Yah\ism 
of Moses manifestly represents a higher re- 
ligion than was known to the pious ances- 
tors. Moreover, it will never do to begin 



PREFACE. Xlll 

the history of Yahvism with the patriarchs. 
Moses is be5'ond any doubt an historical 
person. Even the most iconoclastic criticism 
has never impugned the reality of his exist- 
ence and mission. Had we no record at all 
of his life, we should be constrained to postu- 
late that some such man was the founder of 
Yahvism. But the patriarchs clearly belong 
to the world of legend. The belief in the 
actual existence of the father of a whole 
nation and even of several nations, will not 
stand the test of rational inquiry. The 
patriarchs are tj^pes of piety, the represen- 
tatives of the religious and moral ideals of 
Israel. As ideals they are immortal beings, 
and in this sense all Israelites and Christians 
who walk by the light of the religion of 
Moses are in very deed the spiritual children 
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 

Louisville, Sept. 6, 18^4. 



THE 

RELIGION OF MOSES, 



RELIGION AND GOVERNMENT IN 
PAGAN ANTIQUITY. 

AN INTRODUCTORY I.ECTURK. 

Of all the nations of the earth, an- 
cient, medieval and modem, the American 
people was the first to form a purely po- 
litical commonwealth, to establish a state 
without an established church. If it had 
done nothing else than to start the move- 
ment toward a free church in a free state, 
toward the total divorce of religion from 
politics, it would for this achievement 
alone deserve to rank among the master- 
builders of civilization. Close and in- 
timate relations between the church and 
the state — the maintenance of religious 
institutions, the support of a priesthood, 
the supervision and regulation of the re- 
ligious beliefs by the state authorities — 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 



have till the rise of the American repub- 
lic been the universal rule throughout 
the world. The result of this union 
between church and state has, in most 
respects, proven disastrous to both the 
religious and the political life of society. 
By yoking together earthly powers and 
spiritual powers it materialized and de- 
graded religion, and made the state the 
handmaid of fanaticism. 

The marriage between religion and 
government, which only America has had 
the moral courage and wisdom to dis- 
solve, was contracted in the early days of 
society, in the days of paganism. Prim- 
itive society was in a sense the offspring 
of religion. Both in its foundation and 
in every part of its structure it was made 
up, if not entirely, at least in a large 
measure, of religious elements. 

The primary unit of ancient society, 
the family, had its vital principle in re- 
ligious beliefs and practices. It consisted 
not only of living human members, but 
also of the household gods that were re- 
garded and worshiped as the divine fore- 
fathers of the family. The latter were 



THE RKI.IGION OF MOSES. 



usually represented by rude images of 
wood or stone. They were believed to 
take an active and helpful interest in the 
daily life of their descendants. Of every 
meal a portion of the food and drink was 
offered to them. They were consulted 
on every important matter. The answers 
returned through lots and other means 
were scrupulously obeyed. The family 
was ever anxious to keep their divine 
and powerful relations, dwelling with 
them under the same roof, in the best 
possible humor, in order to secure their 
aid in all undertakings. Most mishaps 
that befell the house were ascribed to the 
anger of the household gods, who were 
quick to resent neglect. The living made 
haste to appease their wrath by rich 
offerings and humble apologies. 

Wrongs committed by one member of 
the family against another, especially dis- 
obedience to parents, cowardice in defend- 
ing the life and avenging the death of 
kindred, were seen by the ever-watchful 
eyes of the divine inmates of the house, 
and visited by them with punishment, 
with sickness or other plagues. For the 



THK RKLIGION OF MOSKS. 



gods and the human members of the 
family were believed, in the literal and 
physical sense of the word, to be of the 
same blood. The latter stood to the 
former in the relation of children to 
their fathers. The well-being and per- 
sonal standing of these gods were in- 
volved in the prosperity and right con- 
duct of the family. With the extinction 
of the family, the gods thereof also per- 
ished. The glory and power of the family 
exalted and magnified them also. It was 
in the strictest meaning of the word their 
own flesh and blood that they watched 
over and helped in good and evil times, 
and from whom they exacted obedience 
and service. They loved and cared only 
for their immediate family, were indif- 
ferent to outsiders and hostile to the en- 
emies of their house. The government 
of the household was carried on by its 
head under the authority of and with 
constant reference to the wishes and com- 
mands of the family gods. Every part 
of conduct had, therefore, what we may 
call a religious aspect. Primitive man 
was not, of course, aware of the fact that 



.THE RKI.IGION OF MOSES. 



he lived, moved and had his being in a 
religious atmosphere. He had not as yet 
learned to differentiate between acts and 
institutions of a purely worldly nature 
and acts and institutions of a sacred 
character, nor was he able to draw a line 
of absolute separation between gods and 
men. Parental authority and divine au- 
thority were S3^nonymous terms, paternal 
government and divine government were 
interchangeable ideas. For the household 
gods were worshiped and obeyed, because 
they were the disembodied fathers or the 
familiar spirits, taking this word in its 
literal original signification. The actual 
head of the family wielded power and 
commanded respect, because he was the 
living fountain-head of the blood common 
to the divine and the human members of 
the group. He stood between the gods 
and their earthly children. He was in 
very truth the mediator between the 
mortals and their divinities, since it was 
through him that the latter transmitted 
to the former their own blood, which was 
regarded as the fountain and principle of 
both the physical and the mental life. The 



THK REI.IGION OF MOSES. 



head of the family represented in his per- 
son the powers and rights of the family 
gods. In their name and in virtue of 
their authority vested in him he ruled, 
and held in possession all the individuals 
composing the family. He alone made 
offerings, prayed to and consulted the 
gods. The head and ruler of the family 
was the priest of the family. He dis- 
pensed a sort of rude justice in the name 
of and in accordance with certain tra- 
ditional rules, believed to have emanated 
from the ancestral gods. He was priest, 
judge and ruler of the family group. 

The simplest and most primitive 
kind of government, government in its 
initial stage, is thus seen to have been 
priestly or religious in its nature and 
functions, to have been vested with divine 
authority. We are using no metaphor 
and expressing no metaphysical idea, 
but are stating a plain historical fact 
when we say that human society had a 
divine origin ; in other words, had its 
origin in religious beliefs. But for the 
universal belief that gods and men were 
physically of the same kith and kin, the 



THK RELIGION OF MOSES. 



formation of the permanent family, which 
was the first and most important act in 
the creation of society, would perhaps 
not have taken place at all. The child- 
ren of every family, once able to shift 
for themselves, would probably have 
broken off all closer connection with 
their parents, submitting to no authority 
and acknowledging no ties whatever. 
The family would at any rate not have 
attained the marvelous vitality, the ten- 
acious structural coherence, which caused 
it to become the mother of society, the 
progenitor of nations, the parent of all 
social virtues, the prototype of humanity. 
The firm belief that the superior beings 
upon whom they relied for aid and pro- 
tection, were their own forefathers, sup- 
plied men with a principle of social 
unity. All persons of the same blood 
must stay together, work for one another 
and defend one another. For they are 
in a sense one being. Have they not the 
blood and life of the same divinities in 
them? Would not the gods be angry 
and punish their children, if they were to 
forsake or to destroy one another ? The 



THE RELIGION OF MOvSES. 



father, from whom they all receive their 
blood, must be obeyed, because he is 
the medium through which the gods 
poured their stream of life into the liv- 
ing generation ! 

The fact that community of blood, 
derived from kindred gods, constituted a 
bond of union between kindred men, 
first led to a partial though exceedingly 
imperfect recognition of the sacredness 
of human life and the wickedness of 
murder. " Thou shalt not kill thy blood 
relation, but thou mayest kill the stran- 
ger " was good law amongst all primitive 
races, as it still is among modern savages. 
" Thou shalt not shed the blood of thy 
relative, because it is the blood of thy 
own gods and they will require his blood 
at thy hand." We are inclined to assume 
that man came by sheer moral intuition 
to look upon the murder of any human 
being as a heinous crime. But in 
reality primitive man, the savage of all 
times and lands, took special pride and 
pleasure in killing as many people as 
possible, provided they were not his kins- 
men. The only check to his man-slaying 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 



ambition was the fear of retaliation. 
The slaughter of strangers gained for 
him the renown of a valiant warrior 
among his clansmen. He was looked up 
to as the noblest of his tribe, and the 
more human heads a man could show as 
trophies of his prowess, the higher did 
he stand in his own estimation. Do not 
the most highly civilized nations of to- 
day in times of war, slaughter one 
another on the so-called field of glory ? 
and are not those who succeed in destroy- 
ing the greatest number of their fellow- 
men, praised as the flower of the nation 
and glorified as immortal heroes ? While 
the war lasts these standard-bearers of 
civilization cast aside the ethics of uni- 
versal humanity and feel and act accord- 
ing to the moral code of their savage 
ancestors. 

The first and most important step 
toward regarding and punishing murder 
as a crime was made, when men came to 
hold the Uves of their kinsmen sacred 
and inviolable because of their kinship 
with the same gods. Murder in the 
early days of the race meant only the 



lO THK REIvIGION OF MOSES. 

killing of a brother, of a blood relation. 
But in course of time ever larger classes 
of men came to be included within the 
category of brother ; thus the conception 
of an impartial criminal law, the execu- 
tion of which forms an important func- 
tion of the civilized state, manifestly 
originated in religious beliefs, however 
crude and materialistic. 

In like manner robbery and theft, if 
committed against strangers, are not con- 
sidered wrongful acts by races still in a 
state of savagery or lower barbarism. 
They are regarded as legitimate and even 
praiseworthy means' of enriching one's 
self Originally only theft and robbery 
between the members of the same family 
and of the same clan were viewed as evil 
deeds. Whatever property the family in 
primitive times stood ^possessed of, was 
not owned by its individual members, 
but belonged to the whole body in its 
collective capacity, including the family 
gods. Whoever robbed or stole from the 
family, robbed and stole from the gods, 
and committed what we call sacrilege. 
Condign punishment was meted out to 



THK RELIGION OF MOSKS. II 

the robber and thief either by the angry 
deity himself, or by his living represent- 
ative, the head of the family. Conse- 
quently this branch of justice, too, which 
has come to be one of the chief offices 
of the state, was religious in origin and 
nature, and continued through countless 
ages to be administered under the au- 
thority and in the name of the gods. 

Marriage, in the proper sense of the 
word, was in the early days of society 
everywhere a most important religious 
act. The bride, being by descent tmre- 
lated to the husband, and therefore at- 
tached by no bond of union to the human 
and divine members of the family, was 
first of all solemnly released from alleg- 
iance to her ow^n family gods. Then she 
was introduced to the household gods of 
her husband, and with prayers and ex- 
pressive symbolic rites adopted into the 
body, of which they were the presiding 
and guardian powers. Every slave bpught 
or captured by the family was brought to 
the seat of the domestic gods, and by a 
ceremonial act delivered over to them or 
given into their power or possession. No 



12 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 

slave could be given his liberty without 
the will and consent of the tutelary god 
of the house. It was by an elaborate 
symbolism that the bondman was released 
from the power of his divine master. We 
thus see that religion and government 
were, in the primary social unit or the 
family, indissolubly bound up together. 
What has been said on this subject 
with regard to the family, applies also 
with some modifications and amplifica- 
tions to the clan and the tribe. Every 
clan consisted of a number of families, 
held together by the ties of blood rela- 
tionship, and every tribe was made up of 
a number of clans believing themselves 
descended from the same ancestors. Every 
clan had its clan god, who was worshiped 
as the father of all the families and all 
the family gods. Every tribe had its 
tribal god, who was adored and obeyed 
as the ancestor and ruler of all the clans 
comprised in the tribe. There was an 
hierarchy of gods. The family gods ruled 
within their own domestic sphere. The 
clan gods bore sway within their own 
restricted domain, extending over the 



THE REI.IGION OF MOSES. 1 3 



affairs of their respective clans. There 
was an altar dedicated to the clan god. 
The chief was his priest, the interpreter 
of his will and the representative of his 
power and his interests. But high above 
them all in might, honor and wisdom 
towered the tribal divinity. He was the 
father and lord of all the men and all the 
gods belonging to the tribe. Men and 
gods were his lineal descendants. He 
loved and cherished them as his children. 
He watched over them with the solicitude 
and foresight of a parent. Whatever 
power he possessed over the forces of na- 
ture, was assiduously used b}^ him in 
furthering their prosperity. He it was 
who increased their flocks, who made 
their fields fruitful and multiplied the 
number of their children. He lent vigor 
to the men and beauty to the w^om.en of 
the tribe. He rejoiced to see his child- 
ren prosperous, and grieved in his heart 
to behold their misery. He was lord over 
all the territory occupied by the tribe, of 
their fields and forests, their rivers and 
lakes, of their hills and valleys and the 
fullness thereof Their land belonged 



14 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 

to him, and he gave it to them as a pos- 
session, as an inheritance forever. The 
chief divinity of the tribe was the war- 
god of all the associated clans. War was 
declared and peace concluded in his name 
and under his supreme authority. He 
was the leader of his people in war. At 
times alone, but most frequently accom- 
panied by the clan divinities and the 
family gods, he marched under some ma- 
terial representation at the head of his 
hosts against his and their enemies. He 
terrified them, smote them with his 
mighty arm, and confounded the counsel 
and power of their gods, while his pres- 
ence inspired his own warriors with death- 
defying courage, and impelled them to 
perform deeds of valor in his honor. 
His was the victory, his the triumph and 
the glory. All the territory that was con- 
quered became his domain, all the foes 
that were subdued were either offered to 
him as a sacrifice or made his servants or 
slaves. The tribal chief held supreme 
command in the field, in virtue of the 
authority of the tribal divinity with which 
he was invested. Disobedience to the 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 1 5 

orders of the war-chief was punished as 
rebellion against the divine war-lord. 

To fight against all unallied tribes 
was not simply a matter of self-preserva- 
tion and self-aggrandizement, but a sacred 
duty, a religious obligation. All strangers 
and their divinities were the natural 
enemies of the tribal divinities. To as- 
sail and crush them meant to overthrow 
the adversaries of the tribal deity, to 
extend his dominion, and magnify his 
power. Thus war and conquest, which 
were the chief occupations of primitive 
societies and the main business of their 
government, were carried on under the 
directing influence of religious motives. 
Every war was a sacred war. Every war 
was waged by the tribal god and his 
children against alien tribes, commanded 
by hostile divinities. The religious char- 
acter of ancient warfare largely explains 
its ruthless cruelty. Men already fero- 
cious by nature were excited to a pitch 
of frenzied hatred, in the belief that they 
were tormenting and destroying the per- 
sonal and abhorred adversaries of their 
god. 



l6 THE RELIGION OF MOSKS. 

They hoped to be rewarded by their 
god for wreaking merciless vengeance on 
his foes and annihilating the worshipers 
and warriors of his divine antagonists, 
lyong after advancing civilization had 
begun to refine the manners and soften 
the hearts of men, the traditional relig- 
ious ideas continued to enforce the rules 
of savage warfare. Down to a very late 
date in history, down to the baneful 
Thirty Years' War, all so-called sacred 
wars, all wars waged in the name of God 
and religion, were marked by horrible 
inhumanity. Whenever men imagine 
themselves to be fighting for the interest 
of Deity, the mere human interests must 
in their eyes dwindle into insignificance, 
and the voice of compassion be hushed 
before the stern command of their divine 
master. The idea of doing battle for 
one's God and helping him against his 
enemies, is under every theological dis- 
guise essentially a pagan belief, and like 
all heathenish notions, thoroughly mis- 
chievous. 

Yet it cannot be denied, that in the 
early days of mankind, this belief 



THK RELIGION OF MOSES. 1 7 

greatly helped to organize society, and 
induce men, in spite of their intense love 
for personal independence, to submit to 
some sort of governmental authority. In 
times of war — and early society lived in 
an almost perpetual state of war — the 
fear and love of the tribal god and father 
determined men to combine their forces 
and yield implicit obedience to the tribal 
chief, Y/ho acts in accordance with com- 
mands which he is believed to receive 
from the divine war-lord. The spirit of 
discipline and subordination was fostered 
by the belief that in obeying the orders 
of the chief they were carrying out the 
behests of their god and master. Savage 
natures, ordinarily swayed by fierce ego- 
tistical instincts, were led by religious 
influences to serve with all their might 
the general good and to sacrifice their 
own lives for their tribe. Religion was the 
mother of heroism. Before any other 
humanizing and organizing power came 
into play, religious ideas nursed all the 
stalwart civic virtues into vigorous life. 
Whenever and wherever several tribes 
coalesced to form a people, powerful 



THK RKI.IGION OF MOSKS. 



religious motives were present, among 
other causes, to bring about the union, 
and continued to be active in preserving 
and cementing that union. To the 
ancient mind a commonwealth without 
common gods and a common cult was 
unthinkable. For what constituted in 
the eyes of the ancients a people or a 
nation? First of all it was a real or 
imaginary community of descent. Com- 
munity of language was falsely taken, as 
it still is to-day, as proof of close relation- 
ship. Blood relationship was the only 
source of sympathy and the only bond 
of union among men. For this reason 
all the tribes that composed a nation 
traced their pedigree back to a common 
ancestor. Thus, mythical forefathers 
supplied the necessary tie to bind all the 
clans and tribes together, and make of 
them all one large family. But every 
kind of family, be it a simple household, 
a clan, a tribe or a people, formed a fam- 
ily only by virtue of the belief, that all 
its members were children and worship- 
ers of the same divinity. Without a 
national god, who was the father of gods 



THE RBI.IGION OF MOSES. 1 9 

and of men and their supreme ruler, a 
society lacked the unifying principle. 
It simply had no reason for existence. 
Without a national divinity a people felt 
itself absolutely powerless to cope with 
its enemies. 

The divine over-lord was the sole 
owner of the land which a nation oc- 
cupied or conquered. Without him a 
people had no title to the territory which 
it possessed. From him the king derived 
his authority to command the national 
forces in the field, to act as supreme judge 
and officiate as high priest. The king was 
the living representative and vicegerent 
of the national god. He was the medi- 
ator between the people and their god, 
ruler and father. He sat in the seat of 
judgment and dispensed justice in the 
name and by the reflected majesty of the 
nation's supreme judge. He was ex- 
pected to vindicate the right of the poor 
against the powerful and to protect the 
weak against the strong, because he rep- 
resented the protector and judge of the 
whole people. The laws by which he 
and his delegates judged were sacred laws. 



20 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 

All the nations of the earth regarded 
their traditional cus):oms and laws as 
divinely communicated. By dint of their 
belief in the divine origin of their laws 
men came by the all-important idea that 
certain fixed rules for the guidance of 
life were absolutely binding on all the 
members of the community. This soul- 
conquering belief imparted to the laws 
their inviolable authority, and prevented 
the wills, passions and personal interests 
of untutored natures from brushing aside 
and casting to the winds all the estab- 
lished ordinances of justice and equity. 
The chief prerogative of the king's 
office consisted in being the high priest 
of the whole nation. All the temples, 
which were dedicated to the national god, 
were the king's sanctuaries. The cult or 
the offering of sacrifices at stated times 
and the chanting of hymns were regarded 
as the chief business of the whole people. 
For on them depended the nation's pros- 
perity, which was won or lost with the 
favor or disfavor of the national divinity. 
The cult was the visible bond of union 
between the people and their god and the 



THK RElvIGION OF MOSES. 21 

perpetual manifestation of their allegiance 
and gratitude. States which abolished the 
kingly office, such as Athens and Rome, 
continued to elect a sacrificial king, in 
order not to arouse the anger of the deity 
by depriving him of his wonted royal 
minister. 

There was not an element in the life 
of the state which was not saturated with 
religion. Nothing great or new was un- 
dertaken in peace or war without first 
inquiring of the gods and ascertaining 
their will by means of auguries or oracles. 
The state rested on the broad basis of 
religion, and every part of it, from foun- 
dation to copestone, was made up of ma- 
terials furnished or shaped by religion. 
Every ancient state was a church, if we 
may use the term church in regard to 
times when such a conception as a church 
distinct from the state was still incon- 
ceivable. There was in one respect a 
wonderful and wholesome oneness in life 
in those ancient states. Affairs divine 
and human, things spiritual and worldly 
were inextricably interwoven. Public in- 
terests were synonymous with divine in- 



22 THK RKlylGION OF MOSES. 

terests, and he who served his country 
and his people best, knew himself to be 
literally serving his god. 

But there was also another and evil 
side to the all-embracing, all-sustaining 
and all-determining religious character of 
the ancient commonwealths. Any great 
change, brought on by the conquest and 
accretion of alien tribes or by loss of 
independence, hopelessly disturbed the 
equilibrium between religious and polit- 
ical life, and destroyed the vital principle 
of the national existence. A people that 
was subjugated and lost its independence, 
virtually ceased to have a religion, be- 
cause it ceased to believe in its own na- 
tional god. A god who proved himself 
unable to protect his own people, a god 
who showed himself too powerless or too 
cowardly to overcome his own and his 
nation's enemies, lost all claims to the 
allegiance of his worshipers. Who was 
he, that they should further serve him ? 
What good would it do them to worship 
him? He was a vanquished potentate, 
to offer prayers and sacrifices to whom 
would be a waste of substance and breath. 



THE REI.IGION OF MOSES. 23 

Nor could the conquered turn to the gods 
of the conqueror. For these were strange 
gods, who in their hatred had crushed 
them with a mighty arm. The con- 
quests of the great conquering nations 
were victories not only over the bodies, 
but also over the souls of the vanquished. 
Frightful spiritual havoc was wrought in 
the souls of the nations overcome by 
Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians and 
Romans. Their religion sank to the 
level of a mere superstition. But the 
essence of their religion, sincere and in- 
tense faith in a presiding and guiding 
national divinity, was destroyed forever. 
What demoralization the downfall of the 
national faith brought with it, it is im- 
possible to describe. The primaeval foun- 
dations of morality were shaken or re- 
moved. For how should people who were 
accustomed to obey the laws, moral and 
civil, solely because they were com- 
manded by their national god, continue 
to regard them as binding, after they had 
ceased to believe in and pay homage to 
their god? What remained of morality 
v/as either a matter of mere blind habit, or 



24 'I'HK REIylGION OF MOSKS. 

was enforced by the political authori- 
ties. Nor did the conquering nations fare 
much better. Their Empires lacked the 
principle of vital unity. Their common- 
wealth being identified with kinship, 
alien peoples were attached to it by mere 
brute force but by no organic ties. There 
was no unifying and integrating power to 
bind them ; they were mere agglomera- 
tions of discordant elements. Antiochus 
Bpiphanes tried to give his empire that 
organic unity by compelling all the sub- 
ject nations to worship the Olympian Jove 
as their supreme deity. The heroism of 
the Jews caused that madman's attempt 
to fail ignominiously. The Roman em- 
pire was a graveyard of nations and na- 
tional divinities, though the Romans 
partly succeeded in making the worship 
of the living emperor a sort of state re- 
ligion. In every province, city and town 
temples were erected to the genius of the 
deified emperor, and a numerous priest- 
hood offered daily incense and sacrifices 
on his altars. Students of history are 
amazed at what seems a blasphemous 
mockery of religion. Yet, for several 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 25 

centuries the worship of the emperors 
was the most widespread and the most 
genuine religion extant in the Roman 
empire. To such a pass of moral degra- 
dation and religious perversion was the 
pagan world brought, that two hundred 
million beings worshiped monsters like 
Caligula, Nero and Domitian as the high- 
est incarnation of the divine powers. 
Only the death-defying courage of the 
Israelites, the worshipers of Yahve, the 
Father and God of all men, offered an 
uncompromising and deadly resistance to 
this travesty of religion to which bank- 
rupt paganism had been reduced. At 
last the spirit of Israel, modified as 
Christianity, appeared upon the scene 
and opened a new epoch in the relations 
between religion and government, state 
and church. 



I. , 

YAHVISM NOT A NATURE 
RBI.IGION. 

The appearance of Yahvism in the 
world marks the beginning of a new and 
brighter era in the religious and moral 
life of humanity. It introduces hitherto 
unknown ideal forces into the relations 
between religion and government. From 
the very day of its birth Yahvism was 
in origin, nature and tendency different 
from all other tribal and national relig- 
ions. The religious systems of all other 
peoples grew and developed by a spon- 
taneous or purely natural process. The 
nature religions were, one and all, the 
natural products of the popular mind as 
much as language, manners, customs, the 
simple arts of life and the rudimentary 
forms of social order and political organ- 
ization. They were the all but neces- 
sary results of man's intercourse with the 
universe, the outcome of his helpless con- 
dition in the midst of nature, yet unde- 
veloped and unconquered, the offspring 



THK RKlvIGION OF MOSKS. 27 

of his desire to understand and propitiate 
the beings and powers surrounding him. 
But Yahvism never was a nature re- 
ligion, however imperfect we may imag- 
ine its beginnings to have been. It did 
not spontaneously spring from the heart 
and mind of a tribe or people. The re- 
ligion of Israel had its birthplace in the 
soul of one man of supreme genius. Its 
cardinal religious ideas and leading moral 
principles were conceived by Moses ben 
Amram after years of profound medita- 
tion and mysterious communion with the 
Eternal and Infinite, and by him com- 
municated to the Israelitish and non- 
Israelitish tribes, which he had delivered 
from the bondage of Egypt. Too much 
stress cannot be laid on this fact. It 
alone furnishes the' key to at least a 
partial understanding of the rise of moral 
monotheism in Israel, a phenomenon to 
which the religious history of no other 
ancient people offers a parallel. The 
truth of the matter is there was no 
people of Israel and no religion of Israel 
before Moses. The creative genius of the 
greatest of prophets and legislators fash- 



28 THK RKIvIGION OF MOSES. 

ioned a new people out of a number of 
enslaved Semitic and non-Semitic clans 
by giving them a new, elevating re- 
ligion. 

He converted them from their grovel- 
ling idolatry and debasing superstitions 
to his own faith in Yahve, the just, right- 
eous and holy God. He taught them to 
believe in Yahve, who hates and crushes 
the wicked, but pities and protects the 
poor and downtrodden. Yahvism is a 
revealed religion, while all forms of pagan- 
ism are natural religions. This belief, 
held alike by the Israelites, Christians 
and Mohammedans, is true in a far deeper 
sense than uncritical minds, believers in 
mechanical inspiration, imagine. It was 
revealed by the individual mind that 
towered above the intelligence of average 
humanity, as Pike's Peak rises above the 
dead level of the neighboring desert. As 
the pictures of Rafael and Murillo are 
superior to the daubs of village painters ; 
as the statues of Phidias and Michael 
Angelo surpass the hideous figures carved 
or sculptured by Aztecs or Africans ; as 
the divine music of Beethoven and Mo- 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 29 

zart excels the simple tunes of the people ; 
as the mind of a Newton exceeds in power 
the mathematical faculty of the average 
man ; as the epics of Homer and the 
tragedies of Shakspere overtop the pro- 
ductions of mediocre poets ; even so do 
the moral teachings and the religious 
ideas of Moses transcend in originality 
and sublimity of conception the fantastic 
cosmogonies, theogonies and ethics of the 
heathen nations. 

Men of the highest genius form, as it 
were, a genus of humanity by themselves. 
We look up to them with awe and wor- 
shipful reverence. We rejoice in their 
greatness, and glory in their marvelous 
achievements. We derive inspiration and 
guidance from their immortal words and 
deeds. But we know ourselves to be mere 
dwarfs, that reach barely up to the knees 
of those intellectual and moral giants. 
These superior intelligences rise above 
the limitations and weaknesses of their 
time, above the traditional beliefs and an- 
cestral superstitions, above the inherited 
loves and hates of their kindred and land, 
and soar on the wings of original power 



30 THK RKlvIGION OF MOSKS. 

into unknown and undreamed of regions 
of thought. They cast aside the dim 
glass of tradition, and with clear and 
illumined eyes look into the heart of 
things. Mouth to mouth the Infinite 
speaks to them, even manifestly and not 
in dark speeches. They behold the form 
of the Eternal incarnate in nature and in 
the life of mortal man. One or two such 
men appear in a thousand or two thou- 
sand years as new-born suns in the skies 
of humanity. Their shining lives, their 
creative thoughts and deeds are sown as 
healing and redeeming light to their own 
time and generation. Their richest bless- 
ings, however, ripen late, to be reaped by 
far off ages. 

One such man of surpassing intel- 
lectual and moral genius was Moses, the 
founder of Yahvism, and the creator of 
the people of Israel. The mainspring 
and impelling motive of his epoch-mak- 
ing prophetic, legislative and political 
activity was infinite pity for the op- 
pressed clans of various races, whose 
brutalizing misery he had for years wit- 
nessed in Egypt. His great heart bled 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 3 1 

for the innocent victims of a ruthless 
tyranny. His compassionate soul burned 
with righteous indignation against the 
inhuman despots and their minions, who 
degraded human beings to the level of 
beasts of burden. The sight of helpless 
people trodden under foot as aliens in the 
name of religion, kindled in his breast 
unquenchable wrath against the religious 
and political system of Egypt and its 
merciless representatives. It was in the 
land of Egypt that he knew so well, 
which he had for years observed from the 
high eminence of his princely station, 
that the pagan theory basing all social 
rights exclusively on kinship was carried 
to its utmost baleful consequences. The 
nation was broken up into a number of 
castes. Each caste traced its pedigree 
back to a different ancestr}^, and derived 
its descent from a different god. The 
castes were separated from one another 
by an impassable legal, religious and social 
gulf. The toiling masses, the tillers of the 
soil, the mechanics and day laborers were 
ground to dust by crushing taxes on their 
personal labor and income. Divine hon- 



32 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 

ors were paid to many species of animals, 
because they were believed to be incar- 
nations or the offspring of the great gods. 
But the common people were held in 
utmost contempt, for the reason that they 
could not claim kinship with the divine 
ancestors of the higher castes. 

The upper castes were regarded as the 
offspring of the greater gods. By virtue 
of that belief they held the lower classes 
in subjection, remorselessly abusing and 
maltreating them. The king was be- 
lieved to be not only a lineal descendant, 
but also a living incarnation of the sun- 
god Osiris. By that title he had absolute 
power over the life and property of all 
his subjects. In theory, and largely also 
in practice, all Egyptians were slaves of 
the god-king. The Pharaoh was the sole 
rightful owner of Upper and Lower Egypt 
and of all they contained. But infinitely 
beneath the very lowest and most despised 
native caste there ranked in Egypt the 
strangers who had voluntarily or as 
prisoners of war taken up their abode 
within the confines of the empire. They 
were abhorred far more than unclean 



THE REIvIGION OF MOSES. 7)3 

animals. They were looked upon and 
detested as the children and servants of 
Seth, the Egyptian devil. Their touch 
was believed to pollute, their breath to 
defile the native. 

In the long course of Egyptian history 
it came to pass that the land was for 
several hundred years under the dominion 
of an alien race of invaders. During that 
period some foreigners rose to dignity and 
power by sheer force of character and ex- 
traordinary wisdom. At such times na- 
tives and foreigners even intermarried 
and gave birth to a mixed population. 
It was at such an epoch of foreign dom- 
ination, while Egyptian exclusiveness, 
while national and religious fanaticism 
were exposed to dissolving influences that 
the Hebrews settled in the land of the 
Nile; more especially the Josephide tribes 
of Ephraim and Manasseh grew and mul- 
tiplied exceedingly by absorbing large 
indigenous elements through intermar- 
riage. But as soon as the natives had 
succeeded in regaining the supremacy ,^ 
the old Egyptian spirit of racial pride 
and hatred reasserted itself with a thou- 



34 I'HK RELIGION OF MOSES. 

sandfold intensified force. All the alien 
tribes, though they had lived for centuries 
in the land and had by their useful labor 
and loyal activity contributed much to- 
ward the wealth and greatness of the 
kingdom, were placed outside the pale of 
human rights and subjected to the most 
outrageous treatment. It was especially 
against the Hebrews, who seem to have 
once played an important part in Egyp- 
tian history, that their brutal national 
and religious reaction was turned. They 
were literally outlawed and by a decree 
of the king declared to be the slaves of 
the state. Their lives were made bitter 
with hard service in mortar and in brick 
and in all manner of service in the field. 
The taskmasters set over them afflicted 
them with burdens beyond human endur- 
ance. Ever new inhuman devices were 
invented in order to crush their spirit and 
to stifle every desire to regain their free- 
dom. When the ruthless despots saw 
that the oppressed continued to multiply 
and to spread abroad in spite of their 
afflictions, they conceived the horrible 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 35 

plan of exterminating them by killing 
all new-born males. 

The religion of Egypt did not raise 
her voice against these deeds of horror. 
The priests of the greater and lesser gods 
looked on unmoved, while infants were 
being torn from the arms of their shriek- 
ing mothers and drowned before the e}^es 
of their miserable fathers. They felt no 
compassion for the hapless aliens driven 
in chain gangs to the quarries, where they 
died by thousands of hunger and thirst, 
of heat and overwork and cruel floggings. 
Why should they ? The victims were 
not the children of any Egyptian tribal 
or national god, nor did they live under 
their protection. Being unrelated to the 
gods of the land and to their human 
descendants, they were, in the most literal 
sense, outcasts and outlaws. They had 
no basis of right to stand on. They had 
no title to their bodies, their souls and 
their labor. They possessed fewer rights 
than animals. 

On the contrary, most animals were 
held sacred and inviolable. The death 



36 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 

penalty was meted out to whoever killed 
a cat or certain other beasts. The reason 
is not far to seek. Those beasts were be- 
lieved to be the offspring or the living 
incarnations of diverse divinities. The 
gods themselves, even the greatest and 
mightiest, were conceived of by their wor- 
shipers in the forms of beasts and birds. 
They were largely endowed with the 
qualities and passions of the animals 
which were their emblems. They but 
represented the powers and phenomena 
of unmoral nature. Nature's mode of 
action, her ways of self-manifestation, 
her utter indifference to good and evil, 
seemed to them to resemble far more the 
instinctive behavior of animals than the 
rational conduct of human beings. In 
the rumbling or roaring thunder, in the 
terrific noises of the raging sea, in the 
howling of the furious tempest they 
seemed to hear the bellowing of heavenly 
bulls, the roar of celestial lions, the bark 
of jackal gods, and the hissing of divine 
serpents. Thus, according to the Egyp- 
tian theology, the earth was governed by 
beast-like divinities. The priests on the 



THE RKIvIGION OF MOSES. 37 

banks of the Nile carried the pagan the- 
ory of divine government to its last log- 
ical conclusions. The worship of external 
nature, of her powers and material phe- 
nomena must needs lead men to the ador- 
ation of gods, that after the manner of 
the beasts of the fields and the fowls of 
the air, act in obedience to natural im- 
pulses and desires, having no regard to 
moral good and evil. In later ages phil- 
osophers tried to humanize the gods, to 
represent them as types of humanity. 
Yet they succeeded but poorly in their 
effort. 

On the whole, the religion of Moses' 
contemporaries in Egypt tended to make 
men sensual, selfish, base and inhumanly 
cruel toward alien races. As are a people's 
gods, such will their worshipers be. The 
adoration of beast-like divinities could 
not but render bestial the men who served 
and venerated them. It was not a relig- 
ion whose chief aim was to teach justice, 
to inculcate mercy and enforce the equi- 
ties of humanity. It did not quicken 
and develop the highest moral capabili- 
ties of man by placing before him the 



38 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 

inspiring ideal of divine perfection. I^ike 
all other heathen religions, it was a crude . 
and fantastic theory of nature, a vain and 
wearisome attempt to explain the mystery 
of universal life and the existence of the 
soul here and hereafter by means of cer- 
tain pantheistic ideas, through the belief 
in divine incarnations and the migration 
of souls. The priests brooded over the 
insoluble problems of nature, and tried 
to penetrate, by means of mythological 
conceptions, to the hidden causes of her 
phenomena. They endeavored to piece 
together all the various Egyptian trin- 
ities, all the beast-gods, the bird-gods and 
fish-gods into one coherent system. They 
built stupendous temples, organized a 
costly and imposing sacrificial service on 
a grand scale, elaborated endless litanies 
and rituals, while living without care or 
labor on the fat of the land. But they 
did not concern themselves with the un- 
speakable misery and moral degradation 
of the lower classes. They had no word 
of protest against the grinding and brut- 
alizing despotism of the kings, as long 
as they were left undisturbed in the en- 



THK RELIGION OF MOSES. 39 

joyment of their privileges and vast in- 
comes. They had no bowels of compas- 
sion for the myriads of tortured wretches, 
who, like the Hebrews and other enslaved 
strangers, were driven by the lash of over- 
seers to perform impossible tasks, and 
were daily outraged in the sanctities of 
their homes, and trodden underfoot like 
worms. 

Even the intense belief of the Egyp- 
tians in the immortality of the soul helped 
to make them the more selfish and the 
more indifferent to the welfare of the 
poor and stranger. The Egyptian knew 
that he had an eternity to live beyond the 
grave, that even his body, if properly 
embalmed and inhumed, would be one 
day re-entered by his returning soul, 
and rise to live again on earth. 

Thus the individual was above all 
things anxious to secure for himself a 
safe passage to the underworld, and to 
procure a pleasant abode among the 
happy ones in Amenti, in Deadman's 
Land. This consummation so devoutly 
wished for by all high-caste Egyptians, 
was brought about by mystic formulas. 



40 THK re:i.igion of mosks. 

and magical rites and incantations, by 
funeral sacrifices and pomps, by rich gifts 
to the temples, by large fees to the priests, 
who chanted demon-compelling hymns 
and recited potent charms, in order to 
insure bliss and salvation to the departed 
rich and mighty. The prospect of per- 
sonal immortality and everlasting bliss, 
which was mainly attained by virtue of 
priestly intercession and sorcery, strength- 
ened in the individual the instincts of 
self-love, and weakened the altruistic feel- 
ings of sympathy and compassion for his 
suffering fellowmen. True, in the later 
and higher stages of social development 
the ethical ideas entered largely into the 
Egyptian conception of retribution be- 
yond the tomb. The dead was believed 
to appear before Osiris and the forty-two 
judges in Amenti, and to declare that he 
had done no wrong whatever on earth. 
But the rich and mighty knew also that 
they could buy from the priests absolu- 
tion from their sins, and through their 
mighty influence with the gods gain an 
entrance to the bright heaven in the sun. 
The upper classes were pretty sure of 



THK RELIGION OF MOSES. 41 

their own salvation, as long as tliey stood 
well with, the priests. This belief gave 
to the crafty priesthood a most powerful 
hold on the minds of men. Even the 
wisest shrank in terror from the thought 
of disobeying their commands and depart- 
ing from their savage superstitions. The 
belief in immortality was used unscrupu- 
lously by the priesthood for their profes- 
sional ends, to gain wealth and power for 
their own caste, to stop intellectual and 
social progress beyond the barriers of 
their consecrated system. On the banks 
of the river of death the Egyptian priests 
stood for ages, to bar the passage to all 
poor souls who could not satisfy their 
demands for ceremonies, formulas and 
fees. 



11. 

I AM THAT I AM. 

It was in the midst of such sur- 
roundings that the great deliverer ap- 
peared, whose providential mission it 
was to start mankind on a new career of 
religious, moral and social development. 
He inaugurated a spiritual revolution 
which in the course of ages was to 
wrench the best part of mankind from its 
pagan moorings, to transform the inner- 
most thoughts of men, and recast all relig- 
ious and social institutions in a new ideal 
mold. The religion of righteousness and 
mercy originated in Moses' death-defying 
compassion for the weak and oppressed,, 
in his unquenchable hatred of wrong, in 
his boundless love of justice. All the 
love and merc}' of which the soul of hu- 
manity is capable, stirred in the tender 
yet mighty soul of Israel's redeemer. 
The heart of infinite existence mani- 
fested all its hidden wealth and power of 
loving-kindness through the heart of the 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 43 

prophet of righteousness. In him the 
aspiring genius of humanity, reaching out 
for higher and better things, revolted with 
horror and indignation from the relig- 
ious, social and political system of Egypt. 
For it was in the name of pitiless and par- 
tial gods that the ruling castes of Egypt 
enslaved and degraded the toiling masses. 
In a moment of righteous and irre- 
pressible anger Moses avenged with his 
own strong arm the cruel wrong done to 
one of the outcast strangers. The die 
was cast! The man of destiny had to 
flee for his life and seek a refuge in the 
neighboring desert among the poor but 
hospitable and free nomads. For many 
years the future shepherd of men led the 
life of a shepherd in the solemn solitude 
of the wilderness. During all those 
years he could not turn his mind's eye 
from the unhappy creatures that were 
being crushed body and soul in the 
iron furnace of Egypt. By night and 
by day he seemed to hear the groaning 
and weeping, the accents of woe and 
despair of those held in cruel bondage. 
Sleepless grief brooded over his great 



44 '^HE REI.IGION OF MOSES. 

soul. His heart was full of bitterness 
against tlie oppressors and their divinities. 
The gods were deaf to the cries and 
lamentations of the weak and oppressed. 
They had hearts of stone. They were 
cruel like their ruthless worshipers. 
They were bribed by sacrifices, temples 
and flattering hymns, to aid the wicked 
tyrant. Whence should help come ? 
Surely not from the merciless and un- 
just gods of the sun, of the moon, of the 
stars, of the earth, of the rivers and 
mountains ! Through the long night of 
spiritual despair he went on wrestling 
with black care and with the demon-gods, 
who were but the terrifying shadows of 
nature's soulless phenomena. 

At last, in an hour of over-flowing 
grace, which was the birth-hour of moral 
monotheism, of the religion of humanity^ 
light began to dawn on his struggling 
soul. In the awful stillness round about 
him he saw the world-mystery lit up by 
the far-spreading flames of divine love, 
and he heard the still voice of the world- 
soul speaking within his breast : 



THE RKI.IGION OF MOSES. 45 

" Seek not God in sun, moon or star. 
Search, not after him in fire and water, in 
clouds and winds, in storms and earth- 
quakes. Thou wilt not find him in earth, 
rivers and seas. They are not gods. 
There is no will nor reason in them nor 
goodness and justice. They come and go, 
they change and pass away, obeying a 
power and a will that is unsearchable. 
He whom thy soul yearns after is Yahve, 
the eternal spirit. He is, he was and he 
will be forever. I am that I am, the same 
from eternity to eternity, the cause of all 
being, the hidden source and power and 
rule of all creation. I am, that is my 
name. No phantom appearance I, no 
delusive and vanishing form, no incarna- 
tion of anything that is in the heavens 
above, in the earth beneath and in the 
waters under the earth, but the living 
and almighty lyord of the spirits of all 
men. Worship him not as the likeness 
of anything visible and material in all 
creation. Adore him as likest that which 
is the highest, holiest, divinest in man ; 
like reason shining in darkness, like jus^ 



46 THE RBLIGION OF MOSES. 

tice crushing the head of oppression, like 
love going forth to all flesh. 

" For Yahve is a just and righteous 
God, slow to anger and rich in mercy. 
Yahve is a gracious and merciful God, 
long-suffering and abundant in goodness 
and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, 
forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, 
but who will by no means clear the 
guilty. He executes the judgment of 
the fatherless and the widow, and loves 
the stranger. His mercy extends over all 
the children of men ; for he has created 
them all. He is the father of all the 
families of the earth. He sees the afflic- 
tion of those who cry by reason of their 
taskmasters. He knows their sorrows. 
He will redeem his children from the 
hand of their oppressors. They that do 
justice with all their might and love 
mercy with all their heart and all their 
soul, are Yahve 's chosen messengers. In 
them does his spirit abide, through 
them he makes manifest his way of 
righteousness, through their saving 
deeds does he act out his redeeming will. 
The fierce anger which burns in thy 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 47 

breast against the inhuman despots is 
the consuming wrath of Yahve, the just 
and righteous. Thy compassion, which 
weeps for the downtrodden and afflicted, 
is the love of the Holy One throbbing 
in thy heart. By the power divine, that 
possesses and thrills th)'- soul, thou shalt 
go and deliver the children of Israel 
from the bondage of Egypt. Upon this 
mountain thou shalt teach the redeemed 
ones to know Yahve, to worship him as 
their lawgiver, their judge and saviour, 
and adore him in the spirit of truth 
and justice, of loving-kindness and holi- 
ness." 

The soul of Moses, though distrustful 
of its own powers, yielded obedience to 
the command of the world-soul commun- 
ing with him in the holy of holies of his 
being. Firmly trusting in the might, 
the wisdom and faithfulness of Yahve, 
the prophet started on his mission to de- 
liver the enslaved tribes, to remove them 
from the seat of their idolatry, and lead 
them to a new land, and there to fashion 
them into a new people. The people he 
intended to form was not to be held 



48 THE RELIGION OF MOSKS. 

together by the ties of blood. It was 
not to be presided over by a local an- 
cestral deity. It should be bound to- 
gether by the bonds of their common 
humanity. The relation of the new na- 
tion to the overruling Divinity should 
consist in a perpetual covenant of right- 
eousness with Yahve, the Father of jus- 
tice and mercy, the lyord of all spirits^ 
the Maker of heaven and earth. 

From that day dates the new history 
of mankind. In that hour moral mono- 
theism, the religion of humanity and the 
germ of a new and higher social and 
political order came to birth in the fruit- 
ful genius of Moses. In that mind of 
marvelous originality the race of man for 
the first time turned away from the wor- 
ship of the material and external world, 
from the adoration of the irrational and 
unmoral powers of nature. In him man 
first bent his gaze inwardly upon the life 
of the soul, upon consciousness and moral 
willing, and conceived the supreme and 
all-creative power in the image of highest 
reason, in the likeness of perfect good- 
ness, in the similitude of mercy. The 



THE REI.IGION OF MOSKS. 49 

Spirit just and righteous is the central 
sun, around which the universe and man- 
kind revolve. From him they receive 
their illumination, their meaning, pur- 
pose and worth. The supreme power is 
supreme reason. The Creator of heaven 
and earth is infinite justice. The Maker 
of man and the Ruler of his destinies is 
a Spirit, all-wise, all-merciful. Man is 
the chief of God's creatures, because he 
is made in the spiritual likeness of his 
Maker, and is potentially endowed with 
the ethical qualities of the Most High. 
The physical life, both of the universe 
and of man, comes to occupy the second- 
ary rank, is regarded as infinitely inferior 
in dignity and power to the spiritual and 
moral life. Material nature has been de- 
throned, the spirit is declared lord and 
king over all. All the instinctive and 
sensual forces, all the unconscious and 
unmoral elements in man and in the 
world without are pushed into the back- 
ground. Mind, manifesting itself as rea- 
son, freewill, righteousness and love, is 
crowned with majesty and honor, and is 
given dominion over all things. 



50 THK RELIGION OF MOSES. 



The immediate and still more the re- 
mote consequences of the new spiritual 
conception of the universe and mankind, 
of God and the soul, were tremendous in 
their transforming and humanizing in- 
fluences on religion and government, on 
private and public morality, on the ideas 
and institutions of society. The world- 
theory originated by Moses regards spirit 
as the essence, as the creative cause and 
sovereign power of the universe and of 
human life. The ultimate effect of the 
Mosaic world-conception must needs be 
the overthrow of the pagan theory which 
considers common descent according to 
the flesh the only tie of kinship and 
brotherhood, the sole bond of social and 
legal afiinity, of religious and national 
unity. As in process of time the rich 
contents of the sublime Mosaic ideas un- 
folded themselves, the spiritual bonds of 
a common humanity came to be substi- 
tuted for the carnal ties of physical de- 
scent, and the unity of an ethical broth- 
erhood supplanted the animal claims of 
blood-relationship. Men may greatly dif- 
fer in their physical characteristics. They 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 5 1 

may show in every lineament of their 
bodily constitution that they belong to 
different races. They may not be con- 
nected by any links of a real or fancied 
ancestral chain. But all men have a soul, 
a spirit akin to that which is highest, 
holiest and most perfect in existence. 
All have a capacity for goodness, which 
elevates them above all inanimate nature 
and above all animals, and brings them 
into close relation with the God of 
righteousness. 

The perfect glory of the idea that 
humanity is the spiritual reflection of 
God flashed out upon Moses' mind in the 
hour when he recognized that Yahve, the 
creator and cause of all being, was the 
all-just, all-merciful and all-wise Spirit of 
spirits. It was borne in upon his soul 
that Yahve, who dwells on high, looks 
down with pity upon the poor and 
afflicted, that he will redeem the despised 
outcasts and bring them nigh unto him- 
self, to serve him and become a blessing 
to all the families of the earth. 

With his soul full of the light of a 
new heaven, a new earth and a new hu- 



52 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 

manity, the man of destiny went down 
to Egypt to perform the work of redemp- 
tion, which was to be the seed of all 
future redemptions and moral blessings. 
The magic of his genius and the irresist- 
ible power of his awe-inspiring person- 
ality succeeded in rescuing not only the 
tribes called Benai Israel, but numerous 
alien people that had shared with the 
Hebrews the cruel lot of Egyptian bond- 
age. The prophet of the God of universal 
righteousness, the champion of human 
rights, had for these poor strangers, who 
took refuge under the wings of his sav- 
ing greatness, the same pity and love 
which he felt for his own kinsmen. 

Providence put at the disposal of this 
creative genius a mixed multitude of un- 
allied races. It was the fittest material 
to form a people on the lines of the new 
ideals, to establish a nation on the spirit- 
ual foundation of man's moral dignity. 
What came to be known in history as the 
people of Israel was from its beginning 
made up of several heterogeneous racial 
elements. A number of clans doubtless 
belonged to what may be called, for want 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 53 

of a better name, the original Hebrew 
stock, which had several centuries be- 
fore settled in Goshen. The two most 
powerful tribes, which formed the bone 
and sinew of the new people and whose 
prowess and love of independence seem 
to have greatly aided Moses in his work 
of deliverance, namely, the tribes of Eph- 
raim and Manasseh, were, as the Bible 
informs us, of a mixed race, due to inter- 
marriage between Hebrews and Egypt- 
ians. According to the Biblical tradition, 
the great tribe of Judah owed its origin 
to the blending of Hebrew and Canaan- 
itish blood. If we assume that the 
Canaanitish elements were absorbed after 
the occupation of Palestine, then the tribe 
of Judah had no distinct existence before 
the Exodus. Moses married into a Mid- 
ianitish clan. His descendants, who were 
the guardians of the Ark and the chief 
priesthood of Israel till the time of David, 
were thus of mixed Hebrew and Midian- 
itish descent. The tribes traced in the 
Bible to the so-called maidservants of 
Jacob, are clearly designated as half- 
breeds, having a large admixture of foreign 



54 I'HK RELIGION OF MOSKS. 

blood in their veins. Besides these di- 
verse racial groups that entered as parts 
into the making of Israel, the Biblical 
record distinctly states that a numerous 
mixed multitude went up from Egypt 
with the Hebrews proper, and blended 
with them. 

The people whom Moses delivered and 
led into the desert were at first an un- 
formed and incoherent mass. They were 
the raw but plastic material into which 
the creative genius of Moses breathed the 
breath of his own spiritual life, so that 
they became a living people, having a 
new spiritual principle for its animated 
soul. The various clans and nondescript 
groups were not welded together into a 
people by a belief in their common de- 
scent from the same human ancestors and 
the same ancestral gods. People that had 
never before claimed kinship with one 
another and had been united by no ties 
of common worship, suddenly found them- 
selves brought together by an astounding 
revolutionary event, and placed into the 
closest relation with one another. They 
had left behind them their clan and tribal 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 55 

gods in the locality which they had in- 
habited for ages. For the pagan gods 
were chained to the soil of their original 
home, and could not quit the region over 
which their empire extended. They 
were identified with certain mountains or 
groves or fields, being merely personifica- 
tions, animal or human, of the particular 
locality. Thus the emigrants saw them- 
selves all at once deprived of their clan 
divinities. The only bond of union be- 
tween them for the time being was the 
overpowering personality of Moses, and 
the overmastering influence of his mind. 
Thus the great master-builder found the 
human material at his disposal well pre- 
pared to be cast into the mold of his relig- 
ious ideas and moral ideals, to be fash- 
ioned into a people consecrated by free 
choice to the service of Yahve. 

The cardinal ideas of the religion of 
Moses were as follows : Yahve is not the 
ancestor, is not the father of the people 
of Israel. Yahve and Israel are not con- 
nected by the ties of physical kinship. 
For Yahve is not a material being, but 
an omnipotent spirit, and none of the 



56 THK RKIvIGION OF MOSES. 

relations of sensual and natural life can 
be ascribed to him. In absolute distinc- 
tion from all heathen gods he has neither 
father nor mother, neither brothers nor 
sisters, neither wife nor children. The 
generative processes of nature in which all 
the heathen divinities are so deeply and 
inextricably involved do not apply to him. 
He is not identical with nature ; he is no 
personification of the whole or of a part 
thereof. He is the Lord and Maker of na- 
ture. He commanded, and the heavens 
and earth came into being. He is a pure 
intelligence. The relations established 
between him and the people of Israel 
are therefore of a purely ethical and 
spiritual kind. He chose Israel to do his 
service, to obey his commandments, to 
observe his just laws, his wise statutes 
and merciful ordinances. And the clans 
delivered from Egypt of their own free 
will and accord chose Yahve, the God 
proclaimed by Moses, to be their God 
and their children's God, even through- 
out all generations. It was a perpetual 
covenant, voluntarily entered into be- 
tween the redeemed ones and their Re- 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 57 

deemer. The assembled tribes took it 
upon themselves and their descendants 
after them to serve Yahve, the God of 
righteousness, alone and no other God 
beside him. By this covenant of right- 
eousness there was established a spiritual 
bond of national union between the hith- 
erto incoherent clans or groups and be- 
tween the people thus formed and their 
lyord and God. 

In tlieor}^ at least — though the practice 
has been lagging behind thousands of 
years — the primitive belief in blood as 
the sole tie of social, national and politi- 
cal fellowships, the belief in kinship as 
the only ground of moral obligation, as 
the only binding relation between the 
worshiping mortal and his divinity, was 
destroyed by the ever memorable event 
described in the Bible as the revelation 
on Mount Sinai. In place of brute ani- 
mal bonds there came into force the spir- 
itual bond of union between men, the 
kinship of souls, the sublime unity of the 
moral nature, embracing all rational be- 
ings without regard to race differences, 
binding together the Infinite Mind and 



58 THE REIvIGION OF MOSES. 

all finite minds. This idea of the spir- 
itual unity of mankind in Yahve, the 
eternal and all-creative spirit, issued forth 
in the fullness of its glory from the soul 
of Moses. But not even now, after thirty- 
five centuries of battle and progress, has 
it been able fully to overcome and sup- 
plant the ancient pagan idea and practice 
of separation and of mutual hostility ac- 
cording to race and blood. Old heathen- 
ism is still deep-seated in unregenerate 
hearts. People that feel, live and act in 
obedience to the animal instincts and 
selfish passions of irrational nature, are 
prone to regard themselves as mere crea- 
tures and tools of nature, and to classify 
men like sheep and horses according to 
their pedigree. He reads the annals 
of mankind to little purpose who fails 
to grasp the momentous fact that the 
religious and ethical revolution started 
by jMoses aimed to wean men from slav- 
ish subservience to sub-human irrational 
forces, to transfer the world's center of 
gravity from the life of nature below man 
to the human life in history, to see 
the revelations of the Infinite chiefly in 



THE REIvIGION OF MOSKS. 59 

the growth and progress of reason. The 
movement of humanity in the new direc- 
tion, the return of humanity upon itself, 
set in on the day when Moses proclaimed 
the Ten Commandments as the religion 
and the code of ethics of mankind. 



III. 

THE DECALOGUE. 

a. UNITY OF GOD. 

b. HIS SERVICK. 

^' I AM Yahve, thy God, who brought 
thee forth from Egypt, out of the house 
of bondage," etc. 

The starting-point of the new faith 
and new morality is not the external 
world, is not the work of creation, but a 
purely historical event, a divine act of 
justice and merciful deliverance. The 
ways of Yahve are henceforth to be 
sought in the dealings of his righteous- 
ness with man. His laws reveal them- 
selves in the unfolding of the highest 
moral powers. His will manifests itself 
in the godward development of the 
human race which for the time being is 
represented by the people redeemed by 
him and consecrated to his service. The 
worship of any other god is forbidden. 
For such worship can mean only the 
adoration of some soulless part of nature, 
of some brute force, of beastlike powers. 



THK RELIGION OF MOSES. 6 1 

It is a crime to worship the Divinity 
under the form of anything that is in the 
heavens above, on the earth beneath or 
in the waters under the earth. Such 
worship is a degradation of the soul of 
man and a denial of the spirituality and 
unity of God. Yahve is the sole and ab- 
solute Lord and Ruler of the people he 
had saved from bondage and taken unto 
himself. Out of gratitude for having 
been redeemed by him from the degrad- 
ing service of Egypt, the tribes cove- 
nanted to serve him, to obey his voice, to 
observe his commandments and statutes. 
In what does Yahve's service consist ? 
Is it in principle and practice like that 
enjoined by the pagan gods ? As far as 
the east is from the west, as far as brutal 
savagery is from enlightened humanity, 
so different is the service to be rendered 
to Yahve from that which the gods of the 
heathen were believed to require at the 
hands of their worshipers. The pagan 
divinities were one and all the owners or 
fathers of their respective communities. 
They did their best to secure the pros- 
perity and power of their own children. 



62 THK RKIylGION OF MOSKS. 

Their own personal interests, their very 
existence was involved in the welfare of 
their nation. They approved of moral 
conduct only in so far as it helped to make 
their people prosperous. Their motives 
were selfish and not ethical. The obedience 
they exacted of their worshipers was that 
due to despotic fathers. They demanded 
sacrifices and incense, the fat of bulls and 
rams. Many of them delighted in heca- 
tombs of human victims. To many male 
and female divinities worship was paid in 
the form of unbridled licentiousness. But 
the service of Yahve was in principle and 
practice of an absolutely ethical nature. 
Yahve is just, righteous, merciful, and 
holy. He is synonymous with goodness 
and perfection. His ways are righteous 
altogether. He is gracious and full of 
compassion, abundant in kindness and 
truth. He hates evil and loves good. 
All the works of iniquity are an abomi- 
nation to him. The evildoers are his 
adversaries, those that practice injustice 
are his haters. There can be, therefore, 
but one kind of service that is acceptable 
to him — the .service of righteousness. 



THK RELIGION OF MOSES. 63 

The worshipers of Yahve can serve him 
only by walking in his ways, by fulfilling 
his righteous commandments, by observ- 
ing his just statutes and merciful judg- 
ments. The will of their God and lyord 
is a law inviolable and eternal unto his 
servants. But it is not the selfish will of 
a divine despot, imposing his arbitrary 
authority on the people of his possession 
and prescribing to it rules of conduct by 
which he himself is not bound. The laws 
of life enjoined by Yahve on his servants 
flow from his own all-good being. They 
are the immutable qualities of his perfec- 
tion, the perennial modes of his self- 
manifestation. The laws of goodness are 
the immanent attributes of the universal 
reason and will. The human soul is akin 
to the world-soul. Therefore, the divine 
laws of goodness are not foreign and re- 
pugnant to it, but are in harmony with 
its own higher life. They are not com- 
mands laid upon it by a tyrannical ex- 
ternal power, but are the expression of 
man's spiritual nature striving to realize 
its own godlike powers. The relation of 
man to God is that of an imperfect spirit- 



64 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 

iial being, that is to grow into harmony 
and likeness with the perfect spirit by 
learning to know and walk in his ways. 
These ways are not m}^sterious and in- 
comprehensible to human intelligence. 
They are not beyond the reach of aspir- 
ing human nature. They are not in 
heaven, that one should say, ''Who will 
go up to heaven and bring them down to 
us ?" They are in man's heart and mouth 
to know and observe them. They are 
the ways of humanity, the ways of life 
and blessedness. The Ten Command- 
ments are divine because they tend to 
make human life perfect. But they are 
no mere ordinances of human reason, he- 
cause they derive their sanctity from the 
will and essence of the Eternal, being the 
revelations of the Infinite Reason through 
the finite reason of man. 

C. YAHVE IS A GOD OF TRUTH. 

'' Thou shalt not take the name of 
Yahve, thy God, in falsehood " anchors 
the duty of truthfulness to the Rock of 
Ages. Yahve is a God of truth. He keeps 
faith forever. When he says, is it not 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 65 



done ? When he promises, is it not 
fulfilled? His throne is established on 
truth. He that takes Yahve's name in 
falsehood rebels against the majesty of 
the God of truth and faithfulness. He 
violates the bond of union between God 
and man, between man and his fellow- 
men. Truthfulness in word and deed is 
no mere matter of prudence and social 
usefulness, but is invested with the awful 
dignity of a divine attribute, in which 
the worshiper must share with his God. 

d. DUTY OF I.ABOR AND REST. 

" Six days shalt thou labor and do all 
thy work, but the seventh is a day of 
rest unto Yahve thy God." 

This commandment gives to human 
labor a divine sanction and moral dignity 
unknown to the pagan world. It frees; 
labor from the contempt in which it was 
held by the heathen nations. Their 
whole social system rested on slave 
labor, on the oppression of the weak by 
the strong. The masterful oppressors 
were regarded as the children of the 
conquering gods, who gave the poor and 



66 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 

stranger into the power of their favor- 
ites, in order to enable them to live in 
idleness by the toil of other men. I^abor 
was despised ; it was considered a badge 
of slavery. No free man would degrade 
himself by eating his bread in the sweat 
of his brow. But Yahve loves the poor 
and stranger. He delivered the enslaved 
tribes from the hand of the tyrant, and 
brought them nigh unto himself to be 
the people of his covenant. 

He who lives by the labor of his op- 
pressed fellow-men is an abomination to 
God. Every man is a spiritual being ; 
every human being is made in the like- 
ness of the Eternal. For this reason 
every man is entitled to the fruits of his 
labor. 

Six days shall every man labor and 
do his work. Work is the duty and 
glory of man. For Yahve himself man- 
ifests his wisdom and majesty in the 
work of creation. The dignity of labor, 
resting on the moral dignity of man, is 
the ideal basis upon which the society of 
the future, the society of God and hu- 
manity, is to build itself 



THE RELIGION OF MOSKS. 67 

The seventh day rest was instituted 
by Moses to remind the Israelites that, 
as they were not the bondmen of any 
man, they should not degrade themselves 
to the position of slaves toiling incess- 
antly without ever enjoying sweet repose. 
They must remember that they are free 
men, by virtue of their knowing and 
serving the God of liberty, who had de- 
livered them from the bondage of Egypt. 
The Sabbath is an everlasting memorial 
of the fact that redemption from slaver}^ 
was the starting-point of the histor}^ and 
the motive power of the mission of Israel, 
that it is the end and aim of religion to 
make men morally and socially free 
through their life in God. One day in 
the week should be consecrated to the 
spiritual relations between man and God. 
Moreover, the love of God extends, 
through the compassion of man, to all 
his creatures, and a day of rest is given 
to the menservants and maidservants, and 
even to the beasts of burden, so that the 
peace and joy of God should reign on the 
Sabbath day in every household. 



68 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 



e — THE SPIRITUAI. NATURE OF FII^IAIv PIETY. 

" Honor thy father and mother, that 
thy days may be prolonged in the land 
which Yahve giveth thee." 

By this commandment filial piety was 
detached from its roots in the primitive 
pagan theory of the family, and was trans- 
planted into the new fruitful soil of moral 
monotheism. Honor is due to parents, 
but not because the blood of the family 
gods is transmitted to the children by 
their father and mother. The commands 
of father and mother are to be obeyed, 
but not because they are the living repre- 
sentatives of the divinities, from whom 
the family derives its physical descent. 
The purely animal ties of blood relation- 
ship are unworthy the spiritual nature of 
man. 

With all save a few most advanced 
pagan societies the relation believed to 
subsist between the gods and their wor- 
shipers was of an unmistakably animal 
nature. For the divinities adored as the 
fathers of families, of clans, of tribes and 
of nations, were conceived of as beasts 



THE RKI.IGION OF MOSKS. 69 



and not as manlike beings. Every kin- 
ship, from the smallest and simplest to 
the largest and most complex, traced its 
pedigree to a divine animal. 

One of the consequences of this purely 
physical or animal connection between 
divine ancestors, human parents and chil- 
dren, was that either the mother or the 
father alone was honored and obeyed ac- 
cording to the theory and law of descent 
prevalent in a society. Where descent 
followed the maternal line, the mother 
alone had authority over her children, 
while the father was not regarded as of 
kin to his own sons and daughters, and 
could lay no claim to their respect. 
Where descent was exclusively in the 
paternal line, the father alone was looked 
upon as the true parent. He alone 
wielded absolute authority over the mem- 
hers of the family. Filial piety meant 
honor and obedience paid solely to him. 
The mother had no share, as far as the 
law went, in the reverence and devotion 
of her children. Thus the vital princi- 
ple underlying the pagan family confined 
the duties of filial piety to one parent, and 



70 THE RKLIGION OF MOSES. 

in an overwhelming majority of societies 
degraded the mother, deprived her of all 
legitimate authority over her children, 
and withheld from her the meed of filial 
reverence. 

Moreover, parental authority rested 
exclusively on the assumed bonds of 
blood relationship between the divine 
ancestor and the human members of his 
family. As long as the child-like belief 
in the actual physical descent of the 
family from the family god was held in 
all sincerity, filial piety stood on firm 
ground. But with growing civilization, 
sooner or later a time arrived when 
better knowledge destroyed the belief 
in the descent of human beings from a 
god. With the destruction of that be- 
lief, filial piety had no longer a religious 
basis to rest on. The family ties broke 
down for want of an organic welding 
principle. Why should children rever- 
ence their father after the once all-pow- 
erful religious reason had lost its hold on 
the minds of men? This explains the 
frightful demoralization of family life, and 
the almost total dissolution of the bonds of 



THE REI.IGION OF MOSES. 7 1 

filial piety in every pagan society, which 
had reached a certain advanced stage of 
intellectual development. 

In the Decalogue filial piety is forever 
liberated from the base heathen concep- 
tion which we have described. Like other 
duties, it is revealed and commanded by 
the infinite Reason and Perfect Will as 
an absolute ethical obligation which the 
finite reason and imperfect will of man 
must strive to fulfill, in order to live and 
act in harmony with the laws of the su- 
preme Intelligence and Goodness. Man 
becomes himself, develops his true self, 
realizes his spiritual nature, the more his 
will is at one with the all-just and all- 
good will of God. 

God is not the father of man in a 
physical sense. He is his spiritual guide 
and law-giver. Obedience to the right- 
eous will of Yahve constitutes the bond 
of living unity, the covenant of right- 
eousness between man and God. Honor 
and obedience are not to be paid to par- 
ents because they are more closely than 
any other beings connected with their 
children by the ties of flesh and blood. 



72 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 

Above the mere physical unity there rises 
the holy unity of spiritual kinship, of 
ethical communion, the divine unity of 
s^-mpathy and love, of gratitude and rev- 
erence. The life of God in humanity and 
nature concentrates and sums itself up in 
the relation of god-fearing parents to their 
offspring. The faithfulness and mercy 
of Providence reveal themselves to the 
children through the loving-kindness and 
moral discipline of father and mother. 
Honor and gratitude shown to them is 
honor and gratitude displayed toward the 
Author of all life. In the parents the 
children obey and reverence the spiritual 
messengers of the divine lawgiver and 
benefactor. The}' are the fountain-head 
and chief representatives of the social life 
of mankind, without which man ceases to 
be man and sinks to the level of a brute. 
Without obedience to the divine laws 
aiming at the general good, society must 
dissolve into its component parts. With- 
out early training in moral discipline and 
obedience to the behests of duty, the in- 
dividual will grow up fiercely selfish and 
brutal, rebellious to the commands of the 



THK RELIGION OF MOSES. 73 

social good, indifferent to the welfare of 
others, caring only for his own interests 
and the satisfaction of his own passionate 
desires. 

The family is the ethical training 
school of humanity. From its heart are 
all the issues of life, of national health 
and disease, of virtue and corruption, of 
the fear of God and of self-destructive 
disobedience to the voice of the Most 
High. The parents are the prophets of 
God, through whom he teaches the gen- 
erations of man how to walk in his ways. 
They are the instruments of his holy 
will, the executors of his laws through 
the power of love and divinely constituted 
authority. 

Yet the authority of father and mother 
according to Mosaic law is quite different 
from that exercised by the father in pagan 
societies. The latter was the absolute 
owner of his children and of their mother. 
He could sell them or slay them. They 
belonged to him by virtue of the physi- 
cal life which they derived from him. 
But according to the higher, spiritual law 
of the Decalogue, the father was by no 



74 THK RElvIGION OF MOSKS. 

means the possessor and master of his 
children. The voice of Yahve addresses 
itself directly to the children, and makes 
filial piety an ethical obligation and not 
a matter of blind submission to a natural 
power. The children stand in an imme- 
diate and direct relation to Yahve. The 
father is not the priest and mediator be- 
tween God and his children. With the 
breaking down of the pagan principle of 
worship, the wall of separation between 
the Deity and the individual disappeared 
and every man stood face to face with his 
Maker. 

This spiritual and ethical principle of 
filial piety, according to the new dispen- 
sation, could not but give the mother equal 
dignity with the father. It culminated 
in the commandment, "Honor thy father 
and thy mother." The wife was not the 
property of her husband, but his help- 
mate, with whom he was to become one 
being through the covenant of love. 
Thus the new religion of Yahvism, or 
moral monotheism, created the new fam- 
ily which was welded together by spirit- 
ual forces, and rested on the immovable 



THK RELIGION OF MOSES. 75 

foundation of divinely sanctioned ethical 
relations. This new creation has en- 
dowed every society, animated by and 
organized according to the spirit of Yahv- 
ism, with inexhaustible and indestructi- 
ble vitality. 

/— SACREDNESS OF I,IFE. 

"Thou shalt not kill." With this 
commandment the ethics of justice broke 
entirely away from the savage conception 
of human life, from the narrow and un- 
ethical view of murder. For this injunc- 
tion invests the life of every human being 
with inviolable sanctity. It is not said,. 
"Thou shalt not kill thy brother, thou 
shalt not kill a blood relation, a member 
of thy clan or tribe, or a son of thy peo- 
ple." In the most general and universal 
way it is said, "Thou shalt not kill," 
embracing in the prohibition all human 
beings, without any reference to the bonds 
of kinship. The fatal spell of the past 
is broken. 

The savage, murderous yell of man 
springing upon man to slay him as his 
born enemy, as the natural foe of his 
tribe and his god, shall no longer be 



76 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 

heard within a world which is sanctified 
and ruled by the God of humanity. 
Across the river of blood, separating man 
from man, a spiritual bridge is thrown, 
uniting all men, the bridge of human 
brotherhood. The natural man, fettered 
and cribbed in his sympathies by the ties 
of blood, confined within the narrow 
prison of kinship, shall be changed into 
the spiritual man, and become brother to 
all the children of Adam. All men are 
made in the spiritual image of God. He 
that kills any human being commits a 
crime against the majesty of Yahve which 
resides in man. He destroys the likeness 
of the Maker. "Thou shalt not kill" is 
the solemn declaration of Yahvism, that 
human life is sacred, that the moral dig- 
nity of man invests him with godlike 
character and value. "Thou shalt not 
kill"; the injunction is absolute, and ad- 
mits no exception. This commandment 
is the divine law, which shall in the last 
days unfold and open into the full-blown 
flower of universal peace. Then the 
righteousness of Yahve shall be the judge 
of all nations and the umpire of all king- 



THK RKI.IGION OF MOSES. 77 

doms, and "they shall beat their swords 
into plowshares, and their spears into 
pruning-hooks. Nation shall not lift 
up the sword against nation, neither shall 
they learn war any more." 

^—PURITY OF I,IFE. 

The commandment forbidding mur- 
der is immediately followed in the Deca- 
logue by the commandment against un- 
chastity. There is an intimate and 
organic connection between these two 
commandments in the ethical scheme of 
Yahvism, as opposed to the polytheistic 
theory of morality and society. The root 
idea of pagan religion, laws, and social 
bonds was as follows : Every clan, tribe, 
and people has a parent god or goddess, 
who gave birth to their community. 
From him or her the successive genera- 
tions derive their life. Every society is 
in the absolute possession of its own an- 
cestral deity. It exists mainly for the 
service and pleasure of the communal 
divinity. The will of the tribal or na- 
tional god is absolutely binding on all 
his children. His commands are laws to 
all the members of the kinship, no mat- 



78 Tun RE^LIGION OF MOSKS. 

ter whether they appear moral or im- 
moral to human judgment. For they 
owe their physical life and being to him. 
They are his children and servants. The 
members of every other kinship or com- 
munity are regarded as born enemies, and 
their gods are hated and dreaded as evil 
demons. Strangers possess no rights 
whatever ; they may be killed as if they 
were animals. Community of blood alone 
secures common rights. Where the tie 
of blood is lacking there exists no bond 
of moral obligation. 

We can but faintly realize what an 
all-absorbing part physical descent, the 
mystery of fatherhood, motherhood, and 
brotherhood, played in the unfolding so- 
cial life, in the religious yearnings and 
guesses and child-like stammerings of the 
remote ancestors of the race. The gen- 
erative processes in nature and mankind, 
the mystery of birth, of growth and 
death, the coming forth of living beings 
out of non-existence, the disappearance 
of all beings and vanishing into noth- 
ingness, filled the primitive mind with 
speechless awe and wonder. The past 



THK RKIylGION OF MOSKS. 79 

generations are linked to the present and 
future generations by the mystic chain of 
birth. The generative process was ap- 
plied as a key and explanation to all that 
is, to all the phenomena of nature, to all 
things animate and inanimate, to animals, 
men, and gods. How did anything that is 
come into being ? And answer was given, 
^' By the process of birth." The gods 
themselves were born and gave birth to 
other gods and to men. They are wor- 
shiped, obeyed, and served, because they 
are the parent causes of life in brute and 
man, they are adored because they are 
the fathers and mothers, the procreators 
of families, clans, tribes, and nations. 

This fact explains the terrible aber- 
ration of the pagan mind, which culmi- 
nated in the shameful service of licen- 
tiousness instituted at the temples in 
honor of the great gods, the fathers of 
tribes and nations. Frightful orgies were 
celebrated for the glory of the mother- 
goddesses, in order to imitate their ex- 
ample, believed to be given in the phe- 
nomena and processes of nature's procre- 
ative life. Up to the rise of Yahvism 



8o THE RKLIGION OF MOSES. 

the mind of man was wholly absorbed in 
the contemplation and worship of object- 
ive or external nature. For good and for 
evil man tried to walk in her ways. In 
order to satisfy the assumed wishes of 
his gods and goddesses, he endeavored to 
copy their sensual characteristics. He 
often put his humanity to the blush, he 
often degraded himself to the level of 
brutes, in order to obey the divine powers 
that confronted him. It is one of the 
most painful and humiliating facts in 
history that the nature -religions fostered 
immorality to an incredible degree. They 
consecrated the most abominable vices, 
and recommended to men shameful prac- 
tices as acts of worship. They stifled 
the still voice of conscience with the ve- 
hement command to do the pleasure of 
the gods at all hazards, and to walk in 
their ways in spite of the protests of 
every-day morality. 

Yahvism came into the world to lib- 
erate the soul of man from the demoral- 
izing bondage of nature and nature-gods, 
to give free scope to the growing moral 
sentiments and the unfolding conscience. 



THK RKI.IGION OF MOSES. 



Moses proclaimed a spiritual God, con- 
ceived in the likeness of the perfect eth- 
ical ideal. Yahve is not the father of gods 
and men. He does not participate in the 
sensuous life of nature. He is a God of 
holiness and purity. Vice of every kind 
is an abomination unto him. He loathes 
the licentious practices and shameful 
usages of heathen worship. His servants 
are required to lead chaste lives. They 
are forbidden to walk after their eyes and 
the desires of their heart. They are com- 
manded to subdue their passions in obe- 
dience to the Holy One, whose ways 
should be their ways. 

From the very hour of its birth to this. 
late day it has been the chief aim of 
Yahvism to emancipate the spirit from 
the flesh, to liberate the mind from the 
greedy, blindly urging passions, and to 
make reason the sole guide of conduct, the 
measurer and determiner of all thoughts 
and actions. Deep down to the very last 
elements of human conduct, through all 
the strata of public and private life, there 
runs a line of cleavage between spiritual 
Yahvism and nature-born paganism. The 



82 THE RKLIGION OF MOSES. 

latter is essentially immoral ; the former 
is nothing if not ethical. 

In its main tendencies and religious 
speculations, in its social forms and family 
institutions, the polytheistic world was 
in the leading-strings of sub-human na- 
ture, in the mighty grasp and under the 
direction of the instinctive forces common 
to brute and man. Worse still, these in- 
stinctive forces were regarded with mys- 
tic awe, were worshiped as the parent 
powers, and their manifestation and move- 
ments were obeyed as laws and imitated 
as divine examples. For this reason the 
practice of horrible vices was commanded 
by primitive custom and sanctioned by 
priestly codes. Indeed, men brought up 
under the influence of the Mosaic law can 
form no adequate conception of the pri- 
vate and institutional immorality v/hich 
was the rule among the heathen nations. 
Where, as among the early Romans, 
purity of family life happened to prevail, 
it lasted onl}' as long as the child-like be- 
liefs held their own. But as soon as they 
broke down before the march of advanc- 
ing knowledge and culture, there opened 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 83 

a moral chasm, which no imperial decrees 
and punishments were able to close. And 
again, whenever the moral forces of 
nobler natures turned with horror from 
the witches' sabbath of licentious worship 
and unbridled passions, there appeared in 
contrast a gloomy and unnatural asceti- 
cism ; there was a turning away from all 
the legitimate joys of life, a fanatical 
contempt for the body and all its vital 
functions. 

But Yahvism rooted the duty of 
chastity and purity in the will and being 
of a spiritual and holy God, to whom all 
forms of licentious service were an abom- 
ination. The purifying and spiritualizing 
effects of the moral discipline of Yahvism 
on the family life of its adherents, the 
habits of virtue and temperance it bred 
in them, are among the most inspiring 
facts in the history of man's ethical edu- 
cation. Whatever else may be said in 
praise of genuine Israelites or true Yah- 
vists of all races, of all times and lands, 
they are surely distinguished by the 
purity of their family relations, by the 
chaste and temperate use they make of 



84 'THK RELIGION OF MOSKS. 

the material pleasures of life, being 
equally removed from ascetic mortifica- 
tion of the flesh and from self-indulgent 
sensualism. The civilized nations of to- 
day owe their moral superiority to the 
fact that their habits of thought and 
feeling, through a long line of gener- 
ations, have been formed by the rigorous 
ethical ideas of Moses and his spiritual 
successors. Their family life and all 
other social institutions have been shaped 
by the Yahvistic ideals of virtue. 

^—SACRED RIGHTS OF PROPERTY. 

"Thou shalt not steal." In the main 
the ideas at the root of this command- 
ment are those underlying the command- 
ment regarding the inviolability and 
sanctity of every human life. The sa- 
cred rights of private property are pro- 
claimed in a universal way. It is not 
said, "Thou shalt not steal from thy 
brother, thou shalt not rob any of thy 
tribesmen, thou shalt not deprive any of 
thy people of whatever belongs to him." 
The qualifying and limiting element of 
family, tribe and people has entirely dis- 



THK RKI.IGION OF MOSKS. 85 

appeared. Every human being, be he a 
native or a stranger, has an inalienable 
right to his possession. To violate this 
cardinal and universal right amounts to 
a subversion of the everlasting founda- 
tions of justice, on which government is 
established among the children of men. 
In societies based on polytheistic princi- 
ples of religion and government, theft, 
robbery and fraud are regarded as crimes 
only if committed within the commun- 
ity. To take away from a stranger his 
property, his wife and his children, is not 
considered reprehensible but rather mer- 
itorious, and is often praised as patriotic. 
Whoever stands outside the pale of kin- 
ship, whoever is not a member of the 
community by the natural laws of blood 
relationship, has no right to his own per- 
son and to his own property. In theory 
and in practice all pagan societies lived 
in a perpetual state of active or passive 
mutual hostility. To inflict all possible 
injury on the life and property of all 
outsiders, to appropriate their labor and 
accumulated wealth by means of open 
violence or by stratagem, was a self-evi- 



86 THK RELIGION OF MOSES. 

dent duty incumbent on the state in its 
collective capacity and on all its mem- 
bers, as far as lay in their individual 
power. To make raids into the territory 
of unrelated families and clans, and carry 
off their cattle, their women and chil- 
dren, was and still is a legitimate practice 
among people who in their notions and 
actions are swayed by the primitive con- 
ceptions of the social bond. Stealing 
from strangers, robbing foreigners, is ap- 
proved by conscience whether the acts of 
spoliation are done on a large scale by 
the whole people or by individuals pilfer- 
ing, cheating and defrauding in a small 
way for their own private benefit. 

The idea of an indestructible right to 
life and property, to all joys and gifts 
earned by labor, the idea of a divine right 
inherent in all human beings by virtue 
of their being ethical personalities, was~ 
unknown to the pagans of the dead past. 
Such an idea is inconceivable also to the 
pagans of our own day, who may call 
themselves Christians, or Israelites, or 
jMohammedans, but whose modes of feel- 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 87 

ing, habits of thought and ways of action 
are those of idolatrous barbarians. 

But this very idea lives and proclaims 
itself with no uncertain sound in the Ten 
Commandments. Thou shalt not steal 
from, thou shalt not rob, nor defraud any 
human being. Sacred, hedged around 
by the adamantine will and law of the 
Eternal, is the life and possession of every 
man. Ask not, like the savage and bar- 
barian, "Who was thy father and who thy 
mother? From what kinship art thou 
sprung? What people has given thee 
birth? The face and features and color 
of what race dost thou bear? What 
community claims thy allegiance? " Ask 
not, "In what God believest thou? By 
what name dost thou invoke the power 
divine, that is high and exalted above 
man's comprehension?" Mete not out 
justice and right to man according to such 
distinctions. I/Ct every man be a full 
man and brother to thee. Reverence the 
divine rights of humanity in every hu- 
man being. Touch not with a plunder- 
ing hand, with the itching palm of fraud, 



THE RKlylGION OF MOSKS. 



aught that belongs to thy fellow-man. 
lyet not the strong despoil the weak. Let 
not the cunning steal the wages of the 
hireling. Let not the powerful contrive 
to live on the fruits of other men's labor. 
All manner of dishonest dealing, diverse 
weights, and false measures, overreaching 
the unwary, tricking the ignorant out of 
his earnings and savings, are rebellions 
against the Judge and Lord of mankind ; 
they are crimes against the majesty of 
justice which dwells in every human soul. 
He misses the true meaning and purpose 
of the religion of Moses who fails to 
understand the new ideal of justice brought 
into the world by Yahvism. It throws 
the shield of the Supreme Being, of the 
highest moral authority, around the indi- 
vidual rights and interests of the hum- 
blest and meanest of mortals. Doing 
wrong to the least of the children of men 
is making war upon the kingdom of God. 
If there is in a community but one 
man, be he a native or a stranger, who is 
despoiled of his substance, and cannot 
obtain redress before the tribunal and 



THK REI.IGION OF MOSKS. 



conscience of the society, that community 
harbors what is the abomination of abom- 
inations to Yahve. It is already breaking 
the covenant of righteousness and is in a 
state of apostasy from him. Since every 
human soul is a reflection of the Infinite 
Spirit, and stands in direct ethical rela- 
tions to him, every infraction of the 
rights of any individual, be it to his per- 
son or to his possession, is sin and rebel- 
lion against God. Justice is the bond of 
union between man and man, justice is 
the spiritual life-principle of the common- 
wealth, by which all its members are 
merged into a higher unity, and by which 
human government manifests itself as di- 
vine government. Woe to him to whose 
hands cling unlawful gain ! Woe to him 
who builds his house with ill-gotten gold ! 
While he is erecting for himself edifices 
full of violence and is gathering treasures 
of iniquity, he is tearing down the temple 
of divine justice, and loosening the bands 
which hold society together. Though 
he establish himself on a rock, the hand 
of omnipotent justice will drag him 



90 THE RKI.IGION OF MOSKS. 

down; though he hide himself in secret 
places, inexorable retribution will find 
him and make his shaine and wickedness 
manifest to all. 

i — THE SACRED RIGHTS OE CHARACTER. 

"Thou shalt not bear false witness 
against thy neighbor." This commanql- 
ment is intimately connected, with the 
preceding ones, and forms an ascending 
part in the progressive unfolding of the 
ethics and religion of Moses. Justice is 
far more than mere refraining from acts 
of theft and robbery. Merely to abstain 
from shedding the blood of human be- 
ings does not satisfy the larger demands 
of righteousness. There is in man far 
more than his blood, than his physical 
life. He has possessions far more precious 
than material goods. He is an ethical 
personality. He is a spiritual being akin 
to the Infinite Spirit. He stands in di- 
rect and indissoluble relations to the holy 
and perfect God. Every individual con- 
tains within himself and represents more 
or less the infinite moral dignity of God 
and humanity. The character of every 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 



fellow-man of thine is invested with 
sacred and inviolable rights. The divine 
majesty of reason, celestial and human, 
dwells within him. The powers of moral 
freedom make him god-like. Breathe 
not, therefore, a lying word against thy 
fellow-man. If thou bear false witness 
against thy neighbor thou committest a 
crime against his moral dignity and 
against thine own, thou killest the spirit 
of justice, thou robbest him of the very 
breath of life, of his honor. In bearing 
false witness against thy neighbor thou 
grievously ofFendest the Almighty and 
Perfect God, who is truth incorruptible,, 
who has established all human relations,, 
universal and personal, on the foundation 
of truth. Falsehood uttered against any 
human being is an insult to the divinity 
which hedges him about. The moral 
essence of man is truth unswervdng to- 
ward all men, sympathy strong as death 
with all that is good and true in the past 
and in the present. The highest knowl- 
edge is the knowledge of man ; the holi- 
est and most valuable truth is that which 
concerns the character, the goodness, and 



92 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 

rights of our fellow-men. To distort and 
falsify the doings, intentions, and moral 
qualities of any person or group of per- 
sons, to calumniate with lying lips' indi- 
viduals, peoples, races, or churches, is 
rebellion against God, is spiritual murder 
against man, is self-abasement the most 
heinous, is apostasy from the soul of 
humanity. 

Yet bearing false witness against their 
fellow-men is the besetting sin of man- 
kind, is the immoral habit of feeling and 
thought inherited from pagan ancestors. 
From the silly gossip, backbiting his 
neighbor, to the solemn historian and om- 
nicient philosopher, writing with an air 
of infallibility and passing absolute judg- 
ments on whole nations and epochs, false 
witness is habitually borne against the 
living and the dead, against peoples and 
against whole races, in a most reckless 
and blasphemous way. Only a few noble 
minds show a strong desire to penetrate 
to the core of truth regarding the life, the 
acts and motives of their fellow-men. 
Small indeed is the number of those who 
brush aside all prejudices, traditional mis- 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 93. 

conceptions and calumnies, and try to do 
ample justice to the character and the 
merits of people of different lineage and 
faith. A bitter and relentless war of 
misjudgments is waged by all against all. 
The state of perpetual warfare of kinship 
against kinship, of tribe against tribe, of 
people against people, of religion against 
religion, has but shifted its ground and 
assumed a different name. 

But it has not changed its nature nor 
is it less baneful in its effects. Instead of 
using javelins, swords and bows to pierce 
the flesh, the poisoned arrows of malice 
and the daggers of calumny are brought 
into play, to inflict incurable wounds on 
the hearts of fellow-men. 

The parent causes of both kinds of 
hostility and warfare are essentially the 
same. The savage, the pagan, regarded 
every man not bound to him by the ties 
of kinship and religion, as standing out- 
side the pale of law and right — outside 
the sacred precincts of social and personal 
fellowship. All sympathy, all love, all 
the forces of unselfishness, all the ele- 
ments of truth and justice were exclu- 



94 'I'HK RKLIGION OF MOSKS. 

sively enlisted in behalf of the society 
circumscribed by the limits of common 
descent and worship. Whoever lived out- 
side that narrow circle was viewed with 
hostility and suspicion ; was met with 
hatred, and pursued with all weapons, 
material and mental — with cunning, 
lying, calumny and malice. The more 
the outsider is injured the better for those 
who are inside ; the lower the outsider 
can be degraded the higher the level of 
those who are inside the community. 
The same brutal, heathenish spirit still 
holds sway over the minds of most mod- 
ern men. Truth, justice, and love for 
those within the pale of your family, 
your state, your race and church, but ju- 
dicial blindness, misrepresentation, falsi- 
fication of facts, calumnies and sneers for 
those who do not dwell within the sacred 
circle of that special community. 

A blush of shame mantles the cheek 
when one recalls the innumerable false- 
hoods, wilful, malicious, envenomed, 
which man has these many thousands of 
years been uttering against man. The 
genius of mankind bows his head in 



THK RKI.IGION OF MOSES. 9,5 

shame on remembering the countless cal- 
umnies and lies, loveless, inhuman, which 
nation has forged against nation, race 
against race, religion against religion ! 
Oh, perverse man ! Art thou not thyself 
degraded if thy remotest fellow-man is 
degraded? Canst thou, by the power of 
slander and lying, break up the eternal 
spiritual unity, which binds thee to all 
men, to all races, and times ? Canst thou 
put a sea of enmity, hatred and untruth 
between thee and thy neighbor who is 
not of thy blood and sect ? Canst thou 
baffle and defeat the omnipotent God, 
who abides in thee and in him, and who 
has chained thee to all men with the un- 
breakable chain of spiritual brotherhood ? 
Canst thou drag down thy brother, whom 
thou callest a stranger ? Canst thou pull 
him down with cords of falsehood from 
the high pedestal of his moral dignity 
without dragging thyself down at the 
same time? If thou bearest false wit- 
ness against thy neighbor, thou bearest 
false witness against thyself. Every stain 
thou hast wrought with malice prepense 
upon the character of a fellow-man is an 



96 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 

ineffaceable stain upon thy own soul. 
Thou risest with his rise, thou fallest 
with his fall. His corruption is also thy 
own corruption ; his glory is also thy 
triumph. Thou sharest in his guilt ; thou 
hast part in his merits. Thou art re- 
sponsible for his sins ; thou art glorified 
through his virtues. For every base and 
false word uttered against any man, any 
people, race, sect, thou shalt be called to 
account by all generations and times, by 
all powers divine and human. For all men 
are members of one great and immortal 
being, of spiritual humanity, which lives,. 
moves and has its growing life in Yahve,. 
the infinite and holy God, the perfect, 
just and holy Spirit. 

/^—INWARD MORAI^ITY. 

The Tenth Commandment, "Thou 
shalt not covet anything that is thy 
neighbor's," rounds off and completes 
the ethics of Yahvism. It is in a sense 
the highest and most perfect expression 
of its moral ideas. It marks a step of 
immeasurable significance beyond the 
ethics of paganism. " Thou shalt not 



THE RKLIGION OF MOSES. 97 

desire anything that belongs to thy neigh- 
bor." For the first time in the history 
of mankind inward morality is required^ 
righteousness in thought and feeling is 
enjoined as much as justice in words and 
deeds. There shall be no covetousness 
lurking in the secret folds of the heart. 
Glory not in the cleanness of thy hands 
if thy heart be full of dishonest desires. 
Boast not to thyself saying : " I am just^ 
I am upright, no unlawful gain clings to 
my hands ; in getting my wealth I have 
violated none of the laws of the land.'* 
If thy honesty is not born of thy own 
incorruptible soul, if thou art not guided 
in thy dealings with all thy fellow-men 
by eternal laws engraved upon the tablets 
of thy own heart, thy honesty and integ- 
rity go for naught ; they are mere husks, 
and contain not the living essence of jus- 
tice. The outward man, his visible acts 
and utterances, may bear the semblance 
of probity, yet the inward man may be a 
thief and robber. A man may regret- 
fully bow his head before the pitiless 
majesty of the law ; he may dread the 
anger and scorn of society ; the threat- 



98 THE RElvIGION OF MOSKS. 

ening eye and uplifted hand of retribu- 
tion may cow him into reluctant submis- 
sion. Shrewdly, selfishly computing his 
own interests, he yields obedience to the 
mandates of justice. Yet he is but a 
calculating usurer of honesty. For his 
heart is lawless, greedy, grasping. The 
inner man is a primeval savage, with all 
the untamed instincts of brute selfish- 
ness. In his heart of hearts he recog- 
nizes his own interests as the supreme 
law. Were the external coercive social 
forces and punishments withdrawn, he 
would steal the substance of the widow 
and the orphan, he would defraud the 
hireling of his wages, and rob his very 
brother and the friend of his bosom of 
his possessions. Vast numbers of such 
men are found in every land under the 
sun. They may call themselves worship- 
ers of the God of justice ; they may pro- 
claim themselves followers of the proph- 
ets of righteousness, but their heart is 
like unto a den of thieves. Daily and 
hourly they commit acts of robbery and 
spoliation in thought and desire. If livid 
envy sits brooding in the inner chambers 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 99 

of a man's soul, he is a brother to the 
thief, he is as truly a robber as the high- 
wayman. For the latter there may be 
some palliation. He may be one of the 
children of ignorance, poverty and neg- 
lect. But the envious and covetous man 
is agitated by his own vicious and ava- 
ricious impulses. Though he dwell in a 
house of plenty, he consumes himself 
with grief on beholding the costlier 
dwelling-place of his neighbor. Though 
all things prosper in his hands, his in- 
satiable eyes would fain devour all the 
wealth that belongs to his fellow-men. 

Are not base feelings and malignant 
thoughts as wicked as evil deeds ? Nay, 
vile feelings are the roots of all wicked- 
ness. Envious thoughts are the fatal 
tree which brings forth the deadly fruit 
of inhumanity, of cruel violence, of per- 
secution, of man's demon-fury against his 
brother, of envenomed social strife, of 
pernicious wars pitting nation against 
nation. Covetousness and envy are the 
mothers of the furies that array class 
against class, incite nations, boastful of 
their advanced civilization, to compass 



lOO THK RKIvIGION OF MOSEYS. 

one another's political and economic 
ruin. They inflame race against race 
with savage hatred, and fill the adherents 
of one creed with merciless aversion to 
the adherents of other religions. It is 
covetousness and envy that cause the 
lives of so many men to be glaring con- 
tradictions and blasphemous lies. With 
hypocritical lips they profess the religion 
of love and the ethics of universal hu- 
manity. But their heart is a stranger to 
their lip-deep professions ; their soul is 
full of inhuman antipathies. The pros- 
perity of those who are not of their own 
race and faith arouses in them the ma- 
lignant emotions which their pagan fore- 
fathers entertained for all strangers. The 
sight of wealth possessed by people who 
are not of their blood excites their cupid- 
ity and envy to a pitch of frenzy. The 
covetousness of their heart quickens all 
the immoral forces of their unregenerate 
nature into baleful activity. They would 
fain strip those whom their soul hates as 
aliens of all their possessions, of their 
last garments, drive them as beggars 
from their homes and make them wan- 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 1 01 

dering outlaws and outcasts. Bnvy makes 
them inliuman, indifferent to the cries 
and sufferings of those they malign and 
persecute, renders them more brutal and 
callous than brutes. The spirit of the 
Ten Commandments has not spiritualized 
their inner life, has not transformed and 
regenerated their heart. They know not 
what inward morality, what soul-born 
righteousness means. 

There is but one principle which, if 
fully realized and translated into feelings, 
will redeem man from the covetous 
promptings and the greedy passions of 
egotism. It is the central and all-domi- 
nating idea of Yahvism, that all men 
have their common and highest life in 
the unfolding life of God, that all human 
beings form a spiritual and indestructible 
unity in the holy will and love of the 
Supreme Being. 

How can I be only for myself, if I 
realize that all men, near and far, are 
part and parcel of my own being ? How 
can I cherish a desire to lay a grasping 
hand upon the wealth of others, how can 
I feel pained by the blessings accruing 



I02 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 

to others, if I feel and know that I am 
bound to all generations by the ties of 
our spiritual kinship, by the identity of 
our soul's deathless essence in the eternal 
and all-embracing life of the universal 
spirit ? If I believe with all my heart in 
the absolute unity, spirituality and per- 
fection of God, and as a necessary conse- 
quence, believe also in the spiritual one- 
ness of humanity, in the ethical brother- 
hood of all men, in the covenant of right- 
eousness between mankind and the Eter- 
nal, my self-love must needs develop and 
expand into universal love, the happiness 
of myself must seek satisfaction in the 
happiness of all my fellow-men, and the 
rights of every person must be realized 
by me as my own inviolable divine right. 
The cardinal principle of morality, " Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," flows 
of necessity from the cardinal doctrine 
of Yahvism. " Yahve, our God, is one." 
The great seers and teachers of Yahvism^ 
have in their own soul, aspiring after a 
godlike life, realized the vital connection 
between those two universal truths. They 
proclaimed their own heart's experience, 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. IO3 

that the love of mankind is the perfect 
fruit of the love of God. The fear of 
God is indeed the beginning of wisdom, 
of that wisdom which abides in the holy of 
holies of the heart as a humanizing power 
making for inward morality, of the wis- 
dom which walks abreast with truth, 
justice and love, which declines to sepa- 
rate any man from the fellowship of the 
soul, and divides not man from man ac- 
cording to race and creed. 

''Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's 
wife." Unholy desires are defilement 
and corruption, even though, cowed by 
fear of social condemnation and public 
contempt, they are not given free scope 
to translate themselves into base deeds. 
IvCt not lustful wishes and thoughts revel 
in the hiding-places of thy soul. The 
fountain of all utterances and activities, 
the heart from which are all the issues of 
life, must be kept pure, or all else will be 
impure, will be tainted to its core and 
contaminated before it ripens into visible 
acts and facts. The seat of good and 
evil, of moral worth and worthlessness, 
is in the soul. Though thy outward 



I04 I'HK RELIGION OF MOSKS. 

conduct, thy palpable life, be as white as 
snow, yet if thy heart is black with sin- 
ful cravings thou art accursed within thy 
innermost being, thou hast fallen away 
from thy spiritual self, thou art a sac- 
rilegious traitor to thy own moral dig- 
nity. Thou hast broken the covenant of 
holiness, which is to make man but a 
little less than a god. Thy conscience, 
incorruptible despite thy inward hypoc- 
risy, tears from thy brow the crown of 
humanity and banishes thee from the 
presence of Yahve, the perfect and holy 
one. The moral life is not something 
mechanical ; it does not consist in craven 
submission to a will and an authority 
which resides in fearful majesty outside 
the soul of man, and is not akin to nor 
communes with his spiritual nature. If 
thy virtue is but the offspring of coward- 
ice, if it is wholly dictated by fear of 
heavenly or human punishments, if the 
motive of thy goodness is social honor 
and the praise of men, thou shalt have no 
reward for thy righteous doings. Thy 
virtuous deeds may go forth and work 
good in the world, but they are not the 



THE RKI.IGION OF MOSES. 105 

children of thy soul. Thou hast no share 
in their merit. They shall not be counted 
to thee for righteousness. The value of 
all good works consists in the moral mo- 
tive, in the good-will, in the love which 
has given them birth. For man is a 
spiritual, an ethical personality. Herein 
consists his glory, his eternal kinship 
with the Most High. His spiritual life, 
his inward morality, is therefore of infi- 
nite importance. Hence the gentlest 
stirrings of the heart, the most fleeting 
thoughts should be under the control of 
the divine laws of justice, purity and 
mercv. 



IV. 

PAGAN AND MOSAIC ETHICS 
CONTRASTED. 

Pagan Morality Exclusively Social Morality. 

Thk transformation of morality from 
mere ontward conformity to social laws 
into an inward spiritual condition, from 
mechanical obedience to an external au- 
thority into a spontaneous self-manifes- 
tation of the soul, is the crowning glory 
of Yahvism. It gave to ethics a new 
and indestructible vital principle. It 
created the new and ideal morality which 
has its source of life in the consciousness 
and conscience of the individual soul. 
Pre-'Yahvistic morality was exclusively- 
social morality. The individual as such 
was not recognized by ancient society, 
and played no part in it. The life, the 
growth and prosperity of the community 
was everything ; the individual man, not 
to speak of the individual woman, dwin- 
dled into insignificance. The very con- 
ception of individuality, of inviolable 



THK RElvIGION OF MOSES. IO7 

individual rights and duties, the very 
idea of a moral personality, had as yet 
no existence. The individual was wholly 
merged into and lost in the kinship ; or 
rather, he had not yet emerged and be- 
come differentiated from the community. 
The family was the smallest and most 
compact unit. It was the primal individ- 
ual. All its living and all its dead mem- 
bers were part of it, subordinate parts 
subserving the ends of the whole organ- 
ism. Throughout the whole chain of its 
generations the family had but one blood, 
one life, one being, one body, of which 
the individuals were mere cells, which 
grew, decayed and died, to make room 
for other new-born human cells. The 
family had its fountain-head in the family 
god. In him it lived, moved and had its 
being. All its successive generations 
flowed from him, and returned to him to 
emerge again from him in new births. 
The clan, the tribe, the people, only re- 
produced on an ever larger scale and in 
an increasingly complex manner the type 
of the family, and were determined by 



I08 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 

the same principles of organization and 
conduct. The social organism, large or 
small, invariably absorbed the lives, the 
interests and the conduct of the individ- 
uals forming its component parts. The 
personal welfare of the human units 
making up the social body was not con- 
sidered. Their desires and preferences 
were not consulted. It was not asked, 
what is most conducive to the happiness 
of the individual. The nature of virtue 
was not defined in accordance with the 
spiritual nature, nor derived from the 
moral wants of the individual citizen. 
The aim of virtue was not the good of 
the individual, not the unfolding of his 
varied powers, not his attainment of per- 
fection, not his material well-being, his 
enjoyment of the largest possible amount 
of pleasure, and his greatest possible 
freedom from pain. The good of the 
corporate body was the sole motive and 
purpose of all actions regarded as moral 
and praiseworthy. Deeds, endeavors and 
aspirations which make for the self-pres- 
ervation, the growth and power of the 
community, were alone considered moral , 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. IO9 

virtuous, divinely willed and commanded. 
Morality and commonweal were identical 
ideas. 

Woe to the individual who was be- 
lieved to be an obstacle to the common 
good. He was ruthlessly cut down, he 
was remorselessly trampled under foot, 
though there was no guilt on his hands 
and no intention to do injury to society. 
Weak, decrepit or crippled children were 
strangled at birth or exposed in forests 
or on mountain tops, to die of hunger or 
cold or to be devoured by wild beasts. 
They could not prove useful to the state 
as warriors or mothers. Hence, they had 
no right to encumber the earth as use-^ 
less drones. The part that was unable 
to serve the whole was broken to pieces 
and cast away as rubbish. The inhuman 
practice of killing old people who had 
become a burden on the active part of 
the community, a practice still in vogue 
among numerous savage tribes, prevailed 
among many of the ruder ancient socie- 
ties. The children themselves were re- 
quired to put their aged parents to death, 
or to carry them into the woods with. 



no THK RKLIGION OF MOSBS. 

only a pitcher of water and a scanty 
amount of food for provision, and leave 
them there to die of starvation or fall a 
prey to prowling beasts. Only the recog- 
nition that old people, though useless as 
fighters and laborers, may render invalu- 
able service by their experience and coun- 
sel, gradually led to the abolition of this 
dreadful custom, which was but one of 
the consequences flowing from the rigor- 
ous and pitiless pagan principle of social 
good and social moralit}^ The individ- 
ual had to obey without questioning, 
without doubting, the laws which were 
believed to have emanated from the pre- 
siding and ruling parent gods of the 
social body. If he refused to fulfill all 
these statutes, ordinances and laws, he 
was crushed by the community without 
mercy. He was either executed as a traitor 
and a rebel against the gods, or a punish- 
ment no less terrible was meted out to 
him ; he was banished from the commun- 
ity and driven forth to be a wanderer and 
a fugitive, an outcast and outlaw upon the 
face of the earth, so that whoever found 
him could slay him with impunity. 



THE RELIGION OF MOSKS. Ill 

Thus morality in primitive societies 
consisted exclusively in unquestioning 
compliance on the part of the individual 
with all the laws of his community. All 
duties were mere outward obligations, 
enforced with irresistible power by society 
in the name of the divine lords of the 
community. Religion, tradition, customs 
and public opinion held the individual 
as in a vise, from which he could not 
break awa}'. He submitted to authority, 
but not through spontaneous resolve. He 
did not voluntarily curb his passions and 
sacrifice his personal pleasure and inter- 
ests to the general good. He was not 
even aware that he possessed individual 
rights which he might forego for the sake 
of the public welfare. He did not know 
that he was a self-centered ethical per- 
sonality. He felt himself absolutely iden- 
tified with the life, wants and demands of 
the community. He could no more think 
of calling into question the binding force 
of the social laws and customs surround- 
ing him and pressing in upon him on all 
sides, than one of us can dream of jump- 
ing away from the earth and leaping 



112 THE RKI.IGION OF MOSES. 



into space. There existed no individual 
personalities, but social bodies. There 
was no private morality, but public moral- 
ity. There were no universal laws, but 
social laws of conduct. There were as 
many codes of ethics as there were com- 
munities and ruling divinities. Every 
member of society yielded ready obedience 
to its statutes, but not willingly, because 
he had no will of his own. There was no 
private conscience, but only a public con- 
science. The feelings and thoughts, the 
inner life, the spiritual processes going on 
in the individual soul were matters of no 
moment. They were not appealed to as 
the ultimate authority in moral judg- 
ments, nor were they consciously allowed 
to have the least voice and influence in 
the activities and movements of the cor- 
porate life of the commonwealth. Such 
a morality was exceedingly defective. 
While it powerfully tended to foster so- 
cial unity and coherence, it was, after all^ 
but a sort of mechanical and external 
morality, and was far from being soul- 
born virtue and self-denial. " There can 
be no altruism in any high sense, where 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. II3 

there is no little room left for egoism, and 
to be truly unselfish man must know in 
all the fullness of its meaning what it is 
to be a self." 

Whenever, in the course of intellect- 
ual development, the individual awoke 
from the slumber of ages to a recognition 
of his dignity and importance, whenever 
he came to realize himself as the center^ 
measure and purpose of all things and all 
activities, such an awakening was fear- 
ful in its consequences, and brought on 
most destructive moral and social up- 
heavals. The growing and expanding 
individualities burst the social frame 
apart. The social bonds, rooted in kin- 
ship, and the public laws deriving their 
authority from ancestral gods, melted 
away under the fiery stream of onrushing^ 
passionate egoisms, breaking down in the- 
ory and practice all moral restraints. The 
brutal forces of despotism had then to 
step in, and by sheer mechanical coercion 
prevent the disintegrating body politic 
from being resolved into its centrifugal 
units. Sooner or later, the pagan or 
primitive theory of man, of kinship, of 



114 ^^^ re:ligion of MOSES. 

society, of religion and government, was 
bound to break down completely, and 
carry with it the whole social fabric rest- 
ing upon it. 

T/ie Ethics of Moses Primarily Individualistic. 

It was only with the moral emanci- 
pation of the individual, first conceived 
and promulgated by Moses, that genuine 
morality and genuine religion made their 
appearance in the world, to be the ani- 
mating and upbuilding principles of a 
monotheistic humanity and civilization, 
which will endure as long as mankind 
will have life on earth. 

It is not to societies but to individu- 
als that the law divine of justice, due 
to all men as their inalienable birthright, 
addresses itself. Thou shalt not steal, 
thou shalt not rob nor defraud thy fel- 
low-men, appeals directly to every indi- 
vidual soul and conscience on behalf of 
every individual, whatever his descent 
and social affiliation. The religion of 
ethical Yahvism, the religion of Moses, 
did not, in its germs and beginnings, grow 
out of the life of a nation. It was not 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. II5 

primarily intended to prescribe rules of 
conduct to a whole people and regulate 
its collective life. It did not leave the 
individual in the background as an insig- 
nificant being, that was but to serve the 
power and growth and well-being of the 
body politic. It teaches above all an 
individualistic morality. It enjoins as 
first and foremost the rights and duties 
of the individual man in his relations to 
individual men. Every commandment 
addresses itself, with its " Thou shalt," 
and ''Thou shalt not," to the individ- 
ual moral consciousness and conscience. 
Yahvism gave birth to an individualistic 
morality, which in its turn became the 
parent of a national morality. The eth- 
ics of Yahvism blossomed forth from the 
soul of a great and inspired individual, 
from the genius of the teacher of right- 
eousness. In the desert, communing for 
forty long years with the Father and 
Spirit of all, Moses, the solitar^^ thinker 
and lover of man, stood face to face with 
eternal justice and love. All alone he 
wandered and mused, without a clan or 
tribe around him. Nations, states, em- 



Il6 THK RELIGION OF MOSES. 

pires, vanished from his sight. The 
lonely prophet, all alone with his flam- 
ing thoughts, questioned the World-soul. 
Alone he wrestled with the problems of 
righteousness and mercy. The light 
streamed into his soul from the heart of 
existence. In himself he experienced the 
power and glory and blessedness of an 
individual spirit living in touch and har- 
mony with the Infinite Spirit. He 
learned to know by original insight and 
by his own expanding self the infinite 
dignity of a human soul. The truth of 
truths flashed upon him — that Yahve was 
not the God of a tribe and a nation, but 
that he stands in direct relation to every 
individual man, loving him and vindica- 
ting his rights and dignity and requiring 
justice and mercy at his hand. 



V. 

YAHVISM WAS FROM ITS VERY 

BEGINNING A CONVERTING 

RELIGION. 

With this gospel of a spiritual mo- 
rality and a spiritual religion, the hero of 
humanity, the saviour of the oppressed, 
appeared before those he had redeemed 
from degrading bondage, and preached 
to them the glad tidings of the infinite 
moral dignity of man, the universal 
ethical brotherhood of all human beings, 
the oneness, perfection and holiness of 
Yahve, in whose unity all souls, all races 
and all generations are united. The 
original ties of kinship and race were 
torn to shreds, the belief in physical 
paternal gods was destroyed by him, and 
eternal war was declared against the as- 
sumed right of the strong to rule and spoli- 
ate the weak. The unifying, cohesive and 
vitalizing powers of the commonwealth, 
of the whole people, must be the fear 
and love of Yahve ; willing, lawful obe- 
dience to his wise and good laws and 



Il8 THE RKI.IGION OF MOSES. 

statutes, the spirituality and the moral 
attributes common to all, the justice and 
mercy of all souls toward all. In a word, 
the covenant of righteousness was sub> 
stituted for the bonds of kinship and 
descent as the all-sustaining, all-embrac- 
ing, all-dignifying principle of social and 
national unity. 

For the first time in the life of man- 
kind a prophet went forth to convert a 
multitude of men, belonging to different 
kinships, tribes, and races, from their own 
low, superstitious and polytheistic beliefs, 
to a new religion ; to change a motley 
crowd of despised fugitives and wander- 
ers into a missionary people. As some 
fourteen hundred years later a small band 
of Jewish apostles started from the land 
of Israel, to bring all the heathen nations 
of the known world into the fold of new- 
born Christianity, to teach them the faith 
and ethics of Jesus, their Teacher and 
Master ; as some six hundred years still 
later the prophet Mohammed converted 
all the idolatrous tribes of Arabia to his 
own religion, to the monotheistic faith 
of Islam ; so did Moses, their prototype 



THE REIvIGION OF MOSKS. II9 

and spiritual father, the fountain-head of 
their universal ideas and ideals, originate 
a proselytizing propagandist religion, so 
did he undertake to convert to Yahvism, 
the religion of his own mighty soul, the 
heterogeneous mass of people whom he 
had succeeded in delivering from Egyp- 
tian slavery. 

ENVIRONMENTS IN THK DESERT. 

What a tremendous task it was ! How 
beset with innumerable difficulties, which 
might well have appeared insurmount- 
able ! The tribes with whom he was 
dealing, whom he was leading, educating 
and elevating, had no fixed abode, had no 
land which they could call their home. 
Under the impulse given to them by the 
over-powering genius of Moses, they had 
quit the fruitful country in which their 
forefathers had settled several hundred 
years before, and were looking forward to 
occupy an unknown rich country, held 
out to them by their leader as the I^and 
of Promise. In the meanwhile, the}^ 
were wandering through desolate regions, 
which afforded them but the scantiest 



I20 THE REI.IGION OF MOvSKS. 



means of subsistence. Such unstable 
and precarious conditions of life are not 
favorable to the growth of steady habits 
of thought and conduct ; they do not 
tend to develop permanent currents of 
noble feelings, such as were required for 
formino- a communitv after the hio^hest 
principles of individual and social moral- 
ity, lyiving amid the joyless uncertain- 
ties of the present, and feeding on great 
hopes, the emigrants were necessarily 
swayed by a spirit of restlessness and ad- 
venture, and could not help oscillating 
between the extremes of unreasonable 
despair and over-wrought enthusiasm. 
The very ground seemed to be shifting 
and changing underneath their feet. 
There was nothing firm, nothing estab- 
lished from of old upon which to stand. 
All the past they had left behind. They 
were marching toward a new world, pro- 
claimed by their prophet to be a better 
and diviner world. 

But the very state of mind, the very 
circumstances, which to the dim sight of 
common men must have appeared most 
unpropitious, were discerned by the eye 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 121 

of that sovereign genius to be the most 
favorable conditions for sowing in human 
hearts the seeds of his new universal 
ideas, for lading in receptive souls the 
foundation of the ideal society of the 
future. The tremendous convulsions 
through which they had passed, the rapid 
succession of marvelous changes which 
they had witnessed, and of which they 
had themselves been an active part, 
tended to dissolve the old and fixed 
associations of ideas, to break up the 
ancient, inherited forms of belief, to 
loosen the hold of irrimemorial standards 
of conduct and faith. Thus all the ele- 
ments and forces of their soul were 
brought into a state of restless flow and 
seething motion. Their minds were, 
therefore, well prepared to receive the 
new religious ideas and the spiritual 
ethics of Moses. 

In times of intellectual stagnancy and 
crystallized social conditions, only a few 
superior minds could have adapted them- 
selves to the revolutionary innovations 
in matters of faith and morals promul- 
gated by Moses. But among those who 



122 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 

had traversed the wilderness with their 
mighty leader and teacher, and had stood 
at the foot of the mount of revelation, 
even average natures were able to adopt 
and assimilate to themselves the new 
dispensation. 

One of the most important results of 
their homeless life was this, that they 
could not well believe Yahve to be a 
local god, confined to a certain circum- 
scribed region inhabited by his people. 
They were in a sense bound to conceive 
him as an omnipresent God, attached to 
no local habitation, since they, his wor- 
shipers, had no fixed dwelling-place, but 
were constantly shifting their ground 
and pushing forward, to conquer another 
people's territory which their eyes had 
never seen. 

Moreover, Yahvism was and is chiefly 
a religion for the poor and weak, for the 
persecuted and down-trodden. Certainly 
no class of men was better fitted to un- 
derstand and receive the gospel of deliv- 
erance from injustice, the gospel of liberty 
and human dignity, than the people who 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 1 23 

had for ages tasted all the misery, bit- 
terness and degradation of Egyptian 
slavery. 

The new wine had to be poured into 
new bottles, and Moses found the most 
receptive new bottles among those he 
had saved from Egyptian bondage. The 
extreme difficulty of obtaining a suffi- 
ciency of food and water in the desert, the 
numerous hardships and privations in- 
separable from a sojourn in the wilder- 
ness for those not to the manner born, 
helped to deepen the sense of dependence 
on and trust in a gracious and wise Provi- 
dence. While toiling as slaves in the 
fruitful land of the Nile they were amply 
provided by their masters with the neces- 
saries of life. The regularity and, one 
might say, the certainty of abundant 
crops, independent of the rain and dew 
of heaven, had hidden from them the 
divine miracle of daily sustenance and 
maintenance. But during their long 
migrations through the desert they lived 
from hand to mouth. Daily the same 
wants and the same uncertainty as to 



124 '^^^ RELIGION OF MOSES. 

liow to satisfy them caused them to turn 
their e}'es in prayer to Yahve, the giver 
of all blessing's. Daily their hearts 
thrilled with gratitude toward the lyord 
on finding unforeseen means of subsist- 
ence. The wonderful deliverance from 
great dangers and difficulties frequently 
wrought by Moses, the matchless powers 
of foresight displayed b)^ their prophet 
leading them along paths never trodden 
by them before, caused them to believe 
in his superhuman wisdom, and accept 
his teachings and declarations as divine 
revelations and divine promises. 

During their pilgrimage through the 
desert their eyes were ever turned toward 
the future, toward a glorious goal shin- 
ing from afar, toward the land of hope 
and promise. Their souls dwelt not in 
the present, but in the dreamland of 
the ideal. The ideal was ever moving 
before them as a pillar of light, beckon- 
ing, luring them onward and onward, 
away from the dreary real toward a 
brighter and better existence, that was to 
be. In this state of eager expectancy 
their imagination fondly played around 



THK RELIGION OF MOSES. 1 25 

things yet to emerge, around blessings 
yet to blossom forth. They were, there- 
fore, in a proper frame of mind to receive 
into their souls and to absorb Moses' 
ideals of faith and conduct, the ideals of 
spiritual humanity embracing all, fusing 
and transforming all, the ideals of moral 
growth and grandeur, ripening to fruits 
of blessedness, tending to peace and sal- 
vation universal. 

There was another circumstance which 
to short-sighted obser\^ers, judging the 
enterprises of genius according to their 
narrow analogies, must have appeared 
fatal to the vast schemes of the Hebrew 
master-builder. The masses which he 
had delivered, which he was resolved to 
shape into a spiritual people, were inco- 
herent, incongruous, heterogeneous. Be- 
longing to various stocks they were held 
together b}' no ties of racial affinities, 
nor were they united by powerful mem- 
ories of a long continued common histor}'. 
There seemed to be no more cohesive 
force between them and no more organic 
unity in them than in the sand-heaps 
drifted together by the caprice of the 



126 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 

desert winds. Yet these most unpromising 
masses were recognized by Moses as the 
providentially prepared material, fittest 
to be cast in a new mold, to be formed 
into a unity higher than known hereto- 
fore, into a spiritual national unity, able 
to resist the corroding and disintegrating 
influence of time, able to attract and as- 
similate elements of the most varied kind. 
No firmly organized people, with all its 
private and public institutions fully de- 
veloped, with innumerable memories 
rooted in a rich and glorious past, would 
have proved plastic enough to receive 
the stamp of Moses' new doctrines and 
to be remodeled in accordance with the 
ethical principles of Yahvism. But the 
raw material at the disposal of Moses, 
being without hardened forms, without a 
fixed mold, without resisting memories, 
without an ancient rigid organization, 
was of wonderful plasticity and pliancy. 
It readily lent itself to his lofty pur- 
pose. Just as a true republic, destined 
to realize on the grandest scale the ideals 
of Moses, could be founded only on the 
virgin soil of America, and be established 



THE REIJGION OF BIOSKS. 1 27 

by men who had previously formed no peo- 
ple, and had gathered from all the ends 
and races of the Old World, so could its 
prototype, the people of Israel, be evolved 
only from new elements, from unorgan- 
ized parts, and welded by ideal forces into 
a living union only on a new stage, and 
started on its career only in the midst of 
an entirely new environment. What the 
war of independence is to the Americans, 
the deliverance from Egypt was to the 
Israelites, the starting-point of their 
career, the inspiring memory and motive 
power of their whole subsequent history. 
Passionate love of liberty, hatred of tyr- 
anny, universal justice, broad humanity, 
the dignity of labor and the moral dig- 
nity of sovereignty of the individual be- 
came to both peoples, to the American 
and to the Israelitish, the organizing and 
propelling forces of their historic life 
What the Constitution of the United 
States is to the American nation, the Ten 
Commandments and amplifying laws, 
added thereto later, were to the people of 
Moses. 



VI. 

THE CONQUEST OF THE LAND 
EAST OF THE JORDAN. 

In spite of the conditions favoring 
the work of Moses, his task at times 
seemed to surpass the powers of even 
that heroic man. He had only a few 
superior followers, who could fully enter 
into the spirit of his religion. His own 
sons, his immediate family and clan, wha 
formed the nucleus of what came to be 
known as the priestly tribe of Levi, made 
up the spiritual elite of the people. He 
could, however, entrust to them only 
minor parts of his work. The chief 
functions of his office devolved on him. 
He was prophet, lawgiver, judge, polit- 
ical ruler and war chief in one person. 
He elaborated his ideas and laws and per- 
sonally carried them into execution. He 
taught and enforced them. He was the 
leader and purveyor of his people. When 
he was absent chaos often ensued. The 
old taint of idolatry, the taint especially 
of Egyptian bull-worship, reasserted it- 



THE RELIGION OF MOSKS. 1 29 

self, while he was away dwelling alone 
on the mountain, meditating the great 
thoughts of his quenchless faith. With 
severe measures he succeeded for a time 
in stamping out that pagan worship. 
When there was dearth of food or lack of 
water, the desperate people clamored 
furiously against him and more than 
once he was afraid of being stoned by 
them. When he thought the time ripe 
for advancing boldly into the coveted 
land, they lagged behind in cowardice 
and refused to follow. When he deemed 
it best to halt, they rushed forward in 
blind audacity. At one time a large part 
of the people resolved to return to Egypt 
and put their head once more under the 
yoke of slavery, in order to eat their fill 
from the fleshpots of that land. His 
great soul was often full of grief and an- 
guish. His heart was many a time sick 
with despair even unto death. The black 
ingratitude of the masses often made him 
pray to God to take his life. Yet he bat- 
tled on heroically, bearing in his bosom 
the people of his love and sorrows, bear- 
ing in his heart a new, a better and greater 



130 the: RKI.IGION OF MOSKS. 

world. After years of infinite toil and 
struggle, having about him the new gen- 
eration brought up iinder his discipline, 
his teachings and the transforming influ- 
ence of his inspiring- presence, he made 
a dash into the land of the Amorites east 
of the Jordan. A few great successfully- 
fought battles put him in possession of 
that very fruitful land. The invaders 
rapidl}^ spread over the conquered terri- 
tory and settled in the midst of the 
native population. In a comparatively 
short time the latter blended with the 
conquerors, increasing the power and 
swelling the numbers of the worshipers 
of Yahve. 

There was soon manifest the difference 
between the effects of pagan conquest 
and the fruits of victories won by the 
hosts of Yahve. Heathen conquerors, 
who built up their political systems on 
the basis of kinship and tribal gods, had 
no choice but to destroy or to enslave 
the defeated nations. But the Israelites 
did not invade Canaan as a conquer- 
ing nation^ but as the host of a con- 
quering and converting religion. Ivike 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 131 

the followers of Mohammed, the people 
of Moses went forth sword in hand to 
win new homes, and to proclaim a new 
faith — inviting, urging the conquered 
population to embrace the religion of 
Yahve, the almighty, just and righteous 
God. The subdued people, who, with 
the loss of their former power and inde- 
pendence, necessarily lost faith in their 
own ancestral gods, need not fall a prey 
to spiritual despair. They could well 
range themselves under the banners of 
Yahve and join themselves to his victo- 
rious people ; for he was not a local and 
tribal divinity, but a universal and al- 
mighty God, the God of all men, the 
Father of justice and mercy, the Maker of 
heaven and earth. He misses the inner- 
most meaning of the history of Israel, so 
different from all purely national histo- 
ries, who fails to realize the all-decisive, 
all-determining fact, that Yahvism cre- 
ated the people of Israel, and in all times 
and climes went on with magnetic forces 
to add new elements from various nation- 
alities and races, incorporating them into 
the living body of the church. lyight is 



132 THK RELIGION OF MOSKS. 

beginning to dawn on unprejudiced in- 
vestigators of the past, whose keen intel- 
lectual and moral sympathies make them 
contemporaries of far-off events. The 
truth is revealing itself to those who 
strive to penetrate through inherited dis- 
guises and fictions to the living heart of 
spiritual realities. They have come to 
recognize that like Buddhism, Christian- 
ity and Islam ism, Yahvism made its ap- 
pearance in the world as a universal 
religion, as a church, which in course of 
time formed a sort of nation, a people 
peculiar in a far deeper sense than is 
superficially understood, inasmuch as it 
was in most vital points and characteris- 
tics distinguished from all nations and 
states organized by polytheistic ideas or 
purely natural forces. 

In the land east of the Jordan, con- 
quered by his own generalship and the 
prowess of his followers, Moses lived to 
see the first auspicious beginnings of 
Israel's growth in power and number. 
It gained through steady accretions from 
the native population who were won over 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 1 33 

to his ideas of spiritual brotherhood and 
universal justice. 

THE DKATH OF MOSES. 

Fain would the great prophet, law- 
giver and statesman have wished to cross 
the Jordan at the head of his hosts, and 
occupy the western land, in order to es- 
tablish the new commonwealth on the 
principles of Yahvism. He was sore 
afraid that his work, if entrusted to other 
hands, would be marred by unwisdom, 
and receive elements of heathen corrup- 
tion at the critical time, when it required 
all his experience, his sagacit}-, his men- 
tal grasp, firmness and authority, to be 
carried to a successful issue. But ex- 
treme old age had overtaken him, telling 
him that the end was nigh to come, that 
the time had arrived for him to lay the 
heavy burden of leadership on younger 
shoulders. In vain the unconquerable 
hero struggled to conquer also this foe. 
His mind and heart were still as youthful 
and vigorous as of old. His prophetic vis- 
ion was still undimmed. His powerful 



134 THE REIvIGION OF MOSES. 

imagination still soared to the dizziest 
heights of heaven and hovered high in 
the purer and diviner air of the ideal. 
Flashes of world-illuming thoughts still 
burst forth from his light-enwrapped 
soul. The stream of immortal poetry 
still flowed from his lips. But the mortal 
body ached for rest, and refused to tenant 
any longer the mighty spirit. In an hour 
of agony the prophet of righteousness 
and the lover of man implored the Master 
of life to vouchsafe unto him but a few 
more years, in order to bring his life-work 
to a crowning end. In vain ! The di- 
vine fiat had gone forth, inexorable, ir- 
revocable. Nature, with whom the pro- 
phet of spirituality had so long wrestled, 
trying to wrench the scepter of power 
from her hand and discrown her as man's 
divinity — nature was at last to overcome 
what was material, corruptible and mor- 
tal in him. He bowed his head in hu- 
mility and yielded himself to the unal- 
terable decree. 

In the presence of a vast assemblage 
he laid his hands on the head of his 
greatest disciple, Joshua ben Nun, and 



THK llELIGION OF MOSES. 1 35 



consecrated him as his successor, to be 
the judge and leader of Israel in war and 
peace. For the last time they heard the 
inspiring voice of their master. His 
God-kissed lips chanted his farewell song, 
a prophetic blessing to Israel, in a strain 
so exalted and soul-bewitching that the 
memor}' thereof has lived from genera- 
tion to generation in the heart of Yahve's 
worshipers. Then he went forth soli- 
tary to meet the destiny of all mortals. 
The prophet of prophets ascended to 
the top of Mount Nebo, the Mount of 
Prophecy. He surveyed the land of his 
promise, which his feet were never to 
tread. He looked northward as far as 
snow-clad lycbanon. His eyes viewed 
the rolling hills and plains of the west, 
and caught the sheen of the Mediter- 
ranean. He turned his gaze toward the 
mountainous southland sloping down into 
the desert. He cast a last glance upon 
the country which his arm had conquered. 
Then, in the presence of the silent heav- 
ens and the breathing earth, the gxeat 
luminary set, unseen of man. And no 
man knows his grave to this day. 



136 THE RKI.IGION OF MOSKS. 

Only men of low degree, wlio in their 
life-time dwell in the narrow house of 
brutal selfishness, in the festering decay 
of their moral, their diviner powers, 
truly die and are buried, and their tomb- 
stone tells the tale of their end-all, of 
their total extinction and final death on 
earth. But men like Moses never die, 
and their grave can be seen nowhere. 
His creative spirit was born again in all 
the generations that came after him and 
walked in his luminous footsteps. His 
mighty spirit will be born again and 
again, will live, think, inspire, and act 
in .all generations yet to be born, until 
mankind will cease to have an abiding 
place on this rolling globe. He came 
into the world with the thousands of 
great men who scattered darkness and 
sowed light and truth and justice. His 
genius dwelt in all the prophets and 
masters of Israel, and worked through 
them salvation unto many nations and 
races. His spirit lived in the great 
Teacher of Galilee and preached with 
heart and tongue the gospel of love and 
universal brotherhood. His spirit went 



THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 1 37 

forth with the Jewish Apostles, to redeem 
the nations from the curse and degrada- 
tion of idolatr}'. His spirit lived again in 
Mahomet, the prophet of Arabia. His 
expanding spirit issued forth with Colum- 
bus to discover this continent, to be the 
home of liberty and broad humanity. 
He was present in the great moral upris- 
ing of Europe; in the reformation, urg- 
ing, encouraging, teaching, enlightening. 
His mighty spirit fought in the ranks of 
those who waged the war of independ- 
ence. His mind composed the greatest 
modern poem of humanity, the Constitu- 
tion of the United States. He was pres- 
ent in the thick of the spiritual battles, 
when the French people rose against 
vicious tyranny and debasing priestcraft. 
His creative powers have greatly helped 
to bring into existence the better and 
godlier modern world of enlightenment, 
of universal humanity and freedom. He 
is born and dwells in the central heart of 
all men good and true, of all women holy 
and merciful. We too, late-born wor- 
shipers of Yahve, sit at the feet of the 
immortal master, listening to his words. 



138 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 

receiving our life's mission from him. 
His eyes, undimmed by time, look at tis 
with the love of a father and teacher. 
His lips speak to us in imperishable 
words, awakening- our innermost self, 
inspiring us to noble willing and doing. 
We reverently kiss the hem of his gar- 
ment. By that magic touch a spark of 
his immortality and greatness interpen- 
etrates itself with our own soul, and 
makes it universal, deathless. 



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